Staff Backend Engineer

Summary

Join Grafana Labs, a remote-first, open-source company, as a Staff Software Engineer and contribute to the next level of infrastructure monitoring capabilities within Grafana Cloud. You will design and implement high-quality, scalable integrations, create middleware components, and represent Grafana Labs in open-source forums. This role requires strong collaboration with product teams, other departments, and participation in on-call rotations. The ideal candidate possesses 8+ years of experience with a major programming language, Kubernetes expertise, and experience with cloud-based software development. Grafana Labs offers a competitive salary, equity, bonuses, and a comprehensive benefits package, including a global annual leave policy of 30 days and 3 Grafana Shutdown Days.

Requirements

• Strong 8+ years of experience with at least one programming language. We use Go, but do not require candidates with Go experience. Long term experience in any major language (Python, .NET, Java, Rust, etc) with a willingness to learn Go is acceptable
• Demonstrated experience working with and monitoring Kubernetes in a production environment
• Experience with cloud-based software development and production systems
• Experience writing clean, maintainable, robust, and performant software
• Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g. Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, OpenTelemetry)
• Experience with delivering projects from start to finish in a self-driven manner
• Experience in a hands-on technical leadership role, setting technical direction and leading project teams
• Experience with microservices architecture and distributed systems
• Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills
• Strong mentoring and leadership skills
• Experience participating in an on-call rotation and incident management

Responsibilities

• Design and implement high-quality, scalable integrations for various infrastructure components, databases, and applications
• Create middleware components, SDKs, and libraries that simplify development and maintenance of observability solutions
• When necessary, represent Grafana Labs in open source forums, working groups, and events
• Work with product teams, in addition to design and docs, to develop features that align with wider product strategy and customer needs
• Support the technical direction and vision of the team, contributing to strategic discussions and future development of observability solutions
• Work with other departments including Sales, Product, and Support teams to deliver a holistic product experience
• Be a part of your team’s follow-the-sun on-call rotations and take ownership of the services you’re running
• Embrace our open-source culture and contribute to other projects that may not directly fall within your team’s scope

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing and building observability backends for various systems and applications
• Experience contributing to or maintaining open source projects, with evidence of successful pull requests and community collaboration
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)/ Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
• In-depth knowledge cloud platform internals
• Strong understanding of metrics collection, visualization, and alerting concepts

Benefits

• Equity
• Bonus (if applicable)
• 30 days of paid time off per annum
• 3 Grafana Shutdown Days