Roll Out OpenTelemetry Tracing Across a Microservices Fintech
Overview
What this challenge is about.
Define an OTel adoption pattern per runtime, instrument 12 services end-to-end, and validate trace propagation. You get a verifiable certificate.
The scenario
The fintech (FCA-regulated, around 90 microservices, on-call rotates 8 engineers) needs MTTD under 20 minutes for payment-critical incidents before its Series D.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Roll out OpenTelemetry tracing across 12 fintech services with a defensible sampling and cardinality policy that the platform team will operate.
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Adopt OpenTelemetry SDKs across multiple runtimes consistently
- Design a Collector topology that scales beyond a pilot
- Define tail-based sampling that keeps the right traces cheaply
- Operate a cardinality budget so observability cost doesn't spiral
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Software Observability
Master · Cloud And Devops
Strong alignment
This challenge maps to Software Observability at the Master level. It sharpens the same practical skills your coursework expects — but in a real industry context with actual constraints and deliverables.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Distributed Tracing
Apply distributed tracing to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Opentelemetry
Apply opentelemetry to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Sampling Strategies
Apply sampling strategies to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Cardinality Control
Apply cardinality control to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Observability
Apply observability to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Kubernetes
Apply kubernetes to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles: