diff --git a/dev/pom.xml b/dev/pom.xml
index f0211dc2b..8595995ed 100644
--- a/dev/pom.xml
+++ b/dev/pom.xml
@@ -104,6 +104,10 @@
       <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
       <artifactId>opentelemetry-sdk-trace</artifactId>
     </dependency>
+    <dependency>
+      <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
+      <artifactId>opentelemetry-sdk-metrics</artifactId>
+    </dependency>
     <dependency>
       <groupId>com.flipkart.zjsonpatch</groupId>
       <artifactId>zjsonpatch</artifactId>
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index fac45cf94..3b9c2bb2d 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -44,7 +44,10 @@
 
     <auto-value.version>1.11.1</auto-value.version>
     <spring-boot.version>3.4.1</spring-boot.version>
-    <otel.version>1.59.0</otel.version>
+    <!-- otel.version capped at 1.51.0 to avoid conflicts with google
+         cloud libraries. Once they update their otel dependencies we
+         can consider updating ours here as well -->
+    <otel.version>1.51.0</otel.version>
     <mcp.version>0.14.0</mcp.version>
     <errorprone.version>2.47.0</errorprone.version>
     <google.genai.version>1.41.0</google.genai.version>