Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Analytics

Details

Grafana Labs is building an AI-native data intelligence system that gives agents reliable, governed access to enterprise context, including data, metadata, definitions, lineage, quality signals, and institutional knowledge.

This role will help build the underlying storage system for a general-purpose data platform. The database layer supports both OLAP and OTLP capabilities, separation of compute and storage, and deployment across multiple cloud providers. This is an early-stage, high-autonomy role suited to someone comfortable working through ambiguity, making pragmatic architectural decisions, and evolving systems from internal dogfooding to production-grade SaaS.

Responsibilities

• Own and build one or more parts of the database, including ingestion, query planning, distributed query execution, data formats, and storage formats.
• Define and build the architecture for a scalable, multi-tenant database service, including tenant isolation, usage tracking, quotas, audit logs, background jobs, and reliable service boundaries.
• Build APIs and database interfaces that allow AI agents, MCP tools, CLIs, and internal applications to retrieve data quickly.
• Partner across product and infrastructure to balance rapid experimentation with long-term reliability as the project moves from prototype to production.
• Operate database services by adding metrics, logs, traces, alerts, and dashboards, and use observability tools to understand system behavior and improve reliability.
• Help shape architecture, service boundaries, storage choices, API contracts, deployment patterns, and engineering practices for a new product area.
• Communicate effectively and contribute across teams in a dynamic, collaborative environment.
• Take full ownership of database solutions, ensuring they are innovative, scalable, maintainable, and aligned with user workflows.

Requirements

• Solid experience building production-grade, user-facing software systems.
• Ability to tackle complex engineering problems and make design decisions with minimal supervision.
• Familiarity with AI technologies and frameworks, with a practical focus on delivering high-quality solutions.
• Comfort releasing prototypes, collecting feedback, and iterating quickly.
• Proven initiative, ownership, and ability to define scope in ambiguous situations.
• Effective communication and a collaborative, solutions-oriented mindset.
• Experience with distributed systems, catalogs and table formats, and query engines.
• Mastery of a programming language such as Golang, C++, or Rust.
• Proven track record of delivering software that reached production and is actively used by users.
• Exposure to cloud-native environments such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Experience using observability tools to understand and troubleshoot system behavior.

Bonus Points

• Experience building distributed query engines.
• Experience building data warehouses and/or data lakes.
• Experience building tools for data engineering.

Benefits

• Equity and bonus, if applicable.
• 100% remote global culture.
• Career growth pathways.
• In-person onboarding.
• Global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum, including three Grafana shutdown days, subject to local legislation.

Compensation

In Germany, the base compensation range is EUR 97,000–EUR 121,000 per year. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skillset. Compensation ranges and benefits are country-specific.

Work Style

Grafana Labs is a remote-first company. Teams meet regularly over video and conduct most work asynchronously and in writing.