Staff Backend Engineer

Grafana Labs is a remote-first, open-source powerhouse with over 20M users of Grafana, the open source visualization tool, around the globe. We help more than 3,000 companies manage their observability strategies with the Grafana LGTM Stack. We’re scaling fast and staying true to what makes us different: an open-source legacy, a global collaborative culture, and a passion for meaningful work. Our team thrives in an innovation-driven environment where transparency, autonomy, and trust fuel everything we do. This is a remote opportunity and we would be interested in applicants from Canada time zones only at this time, with a strong preference to AST + EST timezones. The Opportunity: We are the developers of Tempo, an open source distributed tracing backend that is user-friendly, scalable, and a key component of Grafana Enterprise Traces (GET). Tempo allows users to easily search for traces, create metrics from spans, and connect tracing data with logs and metrics. In our expansive domain, some of the projects we have undertaken include: Creating and operating distributed systems to efficiently handle tracing ingestion and queries Developing TraceQL, a query language specifically designed for selecting traces in Tempo, inspired by PromQL and LogQL Building and improving the metrics-generator, a Tempo component that generates metrics from ingested traces What You’ll Be Doing: Collaborate with your team to deliver new features, analyze outcomes, and make improvements Lead projects from concept to implementation, including ongoing customer support Design, build, operate, and maintain essential systems, ensuring reliability, performance, and availability Take an active role in influencing our roadmap and your own career objectives Participate in on-call rotations and take responsibility for the services you oversee Support and mentor team members, engage in design conversations, and work closely with colleagues Expand your skill set by deepening your knowledge of our cloud products, understanding our customers, and learning about our codebase What Makes You a Great Fit: You are a motivated self-starter with a bias toward action You are customer-focused Pragmatism: You can take on complex challenges and break them down to achieve short feedback loops Collaboration and communication: The smallest unit we have is a team. You’ll be working with your teammates in a fully remote setup. Good communication skills are a must Requirements: Solid experience with at least one programming language. We use Go, but if you have familiarity with Python, C, C++, Rust, or similar, then that translates well Some experience with delivering projects from gathering requirements, brainstorming ideas, all the way to shipping a product to the customer’s hands in a self-driven way Some experience with developing software that runs in the Cloud, or some experience with systems engineering Experience writing clean, robust, and performant software that is easily maintained by others Familiarity with being on-call and performing operations/SRE tasks, or with the concept of infrastructure as code Bonus Points For: Experience working with Kubernetes Been a user of Grafana and Prometheus in operational roles Exposure to microservices architecture and distributed systems, or a desire to learn Experience working in a fully remote, distributed environment where teams operate across multiple time zones Compensation & Rewards: In Canada, the Base compensation range for this role is CAD 174,176- CAD 209,011. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skillset as assessed throughout the interview process. Why You’ll Thrive at Grafana Labs: 100% Remote, Global Culture – As a remote-only company, we bring together talent from around the world, united by a culture of collaboration and shared purpose Scaling Organization – Tackle meaningful work in a high-growth, ever-evolving environment Transparent Communication – Expect open decision-making and regular company-wide updates Innovation-Driven – Autonomy and support to ship great work and try new things Open Source Roots – Built on community-driven values that shape how we work Empowered Teams – High trust, low ego culture that values outcomes over optics Career Growth Pathways – Defined opportunities to grow and develop your career Approachable Leadership – Transparent execs who are involved, visible, and human Passionate People – Join a team of smart, supportive folks who care deeply about what they do Balance is Key - We operate a global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum Equal Opportunity Employer: We will recruit, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, disability, age, veteran status, and all the other fascinating characteristics that make us different and unique. #J-18808-Ljbffr