# A Q&A on Site Reliability Engineering and Observability at Thumbtack

DevFeed: [A Q&A on Site Reliability Engineering and Observability at Thumbtack](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/engineering-at-scale-with-purpose-24723.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/thumbtack-engineering/engineering-at-scale-with-purpose-f36aa16db839?source=rss----1199c607a13f---4>)

Author: Thumbtack People Team

Published: 2026-02-05T18:01:47Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Thumbtack Engineering - Medium](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/thumbtack-engineering-medium.md>)

Topics: [site-reliability-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/site-reliability-engineering.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/observability.md>), [Software as a service](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/saas.md>), [Self-hosted](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/self-hosted.md>), [Incident response](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident-response.md>), [telemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/telemetry.md>)

Tags: [careers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/careers.md>), [company](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/company.md>), [culture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/culture.md>), [employee-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/employee-experience.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [growth](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/growth.md>), [incident-response](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-response.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/observability.md>), [saas](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/saas.md>), [scale](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scale.md>), [self-hosted](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/self-hosted.md>), [site-reliability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/site-reliability.md>), [software-engineer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineer.md>), [software-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineering.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>), [technical](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/technical.md>), [technology](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/technology.md>), [work](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/work.md>)

## AI overview

In this Q&A, Thumbtack Senior Software Engineer Brett Shouse discusses his site reliability engineering work, including migrating self-hosted observability services to a unified SaaS platform. He also describes addressing technical debt, improving incident response, and unifying logs, traces, and metrics.

## Source excerpt

A Q&A with Brett Shouse, Senior Software Engineer.As an engineer, what drew you to Thumbtack? I joined Thumbtack in March of 2025, and from day one it's felt like the right place to grow, build, and make a real impact. I was ready for a fresh challenge and wanted to help evolve a business that truly aligned with my values. I took a very intentional approach to my search. I reviewed the career sites of 106 companies to deeply understand their cultures, and from that process I applied and interviewed with four outstanding organizations. Each had strong teams and compelling missions, but Thumbtack stood out immediately. The values resonated with me, the opportunities for growth were clear, and I could see countless ways to meaningfully contribute -- not just within site reliability engineering, but across engineering as a whole. Choosing Thumbtack felt both exciting and obvious. What work are you currently focused on? I'm currently leading work to migrate a collection of self-hosted observability services into a unified SaaS platform. This effort is reducing the ongoing burden of systems administration, application support, and alert fatigue, while also lowering costs. Most importantly, it frees up engineering time and energy so teams can focus on the projects that directly support Thumbtack's customers. It's deeply satisfying work because the benefits compound across the entire organization. How would you describe the culture of your team? Supportive, driven, and genuinely fun. My teammates are endlessly curious, highly skilled, and always learning. We love automating toil away so we can focus on meaningful, high-impact work. It's a team that pushes for excellence while lifting each other up along the way. What are some of the unique technical challenges you're solving? Tackling technical debt that naturally accumulates when a company leans in early and then grows rapidly. Defining what effective incident response means for the business and enabling fast, confident res