Remote opportunity at
Grafana LabsStaff Software Engineer - Adaptive Telemetry, Databases | USA | Remote
Role overview. Grafana Labs is recruiting a Staff-level backend engineer for the Adaptive Telemetry group, which sits in the Databases department. The posting's body calls the…
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About This Role
Role overview. Grafana Labs is recruiting a Staff-level backend engineer for the Adaptive Telemetry group, which sits in the Databases department. The posting's body calls the position a Staff Backend Engineer role. It is full-time and remote, and candidates should work in USA time zones. Context. The Databases department runs the telemetry stores behind Grafana Cloud, namely Mimir (metrics), Loki (logs), Tempo (traces) and Pyroscope (profiles), all offered as a…
Job Description
Role overview. Grafana Labs is recruiting a Staff-level backend engineer for the Adaptive Telemetry group, which sits in the Databases department. The posting's body calls the position a Staff Backend Engineer role. It is full-time and remote, and candidates should work in USA time zones.
Context. The Databases department runs the telemetry stores behind Grafana Cloud, namely Mimir (metrics), Loki (logs), Tempo (traces) and Pyroscope (profiles), all offered as a cloud service. The Adaptive Telemetry group builds adaptive products for each signal type, which tune storage according to real usage so that only the most useful data is kept.
Scope. The engineer takes large cross-team projects from design through rollout and long-term operation, and is accountable for how critical systems are designed, kept reliable, fast and affordable. Other duties include defining SLOs and SLIs, running high-severity incident response, leading blameless post-mortems, and driving automation that cuts toil and shortens debugging. The role also aligns Product and Design teams, negotiates tradeoffs and mentors senior and mid-level engineers. Explaining the technical plan to people outside engineering is part of the job.
Who it suits. Candidates should have shipped large distributed systems across several teams and be able to reason about how speed, durability, uptime and spending trade off against each other. Hands-on work with cloud-native platforms, including microservices, containers, Kubernetes and infrastructure as code, is expected. Go is the main language, and experience with Python, C, C++ or Rust is considered a good match. The team encourages AI-assisted development paired with strong code review.
Responsibilities
- Set the technical strategy and roadmap, including the architectural vision for major platform improvements
- Own large cross-team projects from design through rollout and ongoing operation
- Be accountable for the design, reliability and running cost of key systems
- Define SLOs and SLIs, run high-severity incident response and lead blameless post-mortems
- Drive automation and observability work that reduces toil and speeds up debugging
- Align Product, Design and other teams, negotiate tradeoffs and unblock delivery
- Mentor engineers, lead design reviews and raise engineering standards
- Explain the technical plan to people outside engineering
Requirements
- Track record shipping large distributed systems across several teams
- Sound system design judgment, including how speed, durability, uptime and expense trade off
- Practical work with cloud-native platforms: microservices, containers, Kubernetes and infrastructure as code
- Experience defining SLOs and SLIs, capacity planning and performance tuning
- Clean, well-tested coding skills, with Go preferred and Python, C, C++ or Rust considered similar
- Comfort with AI-assisted development tools
- Ability to influence without formal authority in a remote-first setting
- Clear written and verbal communication
Qualifications
- Experience with streaming or messaging systems such as Kafka
- Familiarity with observability tooling such as Prometheus and Grafana
Core Skills
Benefits
- Equity, with bonus where applicable
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
Is this role remote?
Yes. The posting is remote, and candidates should work in USA time zones.
What is the pay range?
The posting gives a U.S. base compensation range of USD 174,986 to 209,983. It says actual pay depends on level, experience and skill set.
How many years of experience are required?
The posting does not give a number of years. It asks for a track record of delivering big distributed systems.
Is the position full-time?
Yes. The posting is listed as a full-time role.
Sample Interview Questions
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