Staff Software Engineer - Databases, Tempo | United Kingdom | Remote @Grafana Labs

Overview

Grafana Labs is the company behind Grafana Cloud, a fully managed observability platform trusted by thousands of organizations worldwide. The company is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the Tempo team, which focuses on building the open-source distributed tracing backend for Grafana Cloud Traces and Grafana Enterprise Traces.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead multi-quarter technical initiatives from problem framing through rollout.
• Own the architecture of core Tempo components such as ingestion, storage, query, and metrics generation.
• Design APIs for humans and agents to enable seamless integration with Tempo.
• Drive operational excellence against concrete service level objectives (SLOs).
• Collaborate with Product Management and other teams to ship solutions impacting product consumption.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews and collaborative problem-solving.
• Participate in on-call duties and contribute to open-source initiatives.

Requirements

• Proven track record of leading complex technical initiatives.
• Experience with distributed data systems and production environments.
• Strong software craftsmanship and proficiency in Go or other systems languages (Rust, C, C++).
• Operational mindset with experience handling production services.
• Ability to break complex problems into short feedback loops.
• Excellent communication skills in a remote, asynchronous work environment.
• Bonus points for familiarity with tracing, OpenTelemetry, or large-scale observability systems.

Benefits

• 100% remote work with a global team culture.
• Base compensation range of GBP 103,958 - GBP 124,750.
• Equity and bonus opportunities.
• 30 days of annual leave, including Grafana Shutdown Days.
• Access to modern AI tools for coding productivity.
• In-person onboarding experience with new team members.
• Defined pathways for career growth and development.

Location

This is a fully remote opportunity, with a preference for candidates in Spain, Sweden, UK, Ireland, or Germany.

How to Apply

Please submit your application through the provided link.