Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Analytics | Spain | Remote

Details

Grafana Labs is building an AI-native data intelligence system that provides agents with 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 with OLAP and OTLP capabilities. The database layer will support analytics queries and freshly stored data, embrace separation of compute and storage, and run across multiple cloud providers. This is an early-stage, high-autonomy role involving architectural decisions, rapid experimentation, 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.
• Help define and build a scalable, multi-tenant database SaaS foundation, including tenant isolation, usage tracking, quotas, audit logs, background jobs, and reliable service boundaries.
• Build APIs and database interfaces for AI agents, MCP tools, CLIs, and internal applications to retrieve data quickly.
• Make practical tradeoffs between rapid experimentation and long-term reliability as the project progresses from prototype to production.
• Instrument database services with metrics, logs, traces, alerts, and dashboards.
• Use observability tools to understand system behavior and improve reliability.
• Shape architecture, service boundaries, storage choices, API contracts, deployment patterns, and engineering practices.
• Communicate effectively and contribute across teams in a dynamic, collaborative environment.
• Take full ownership of database solutions to ensure they are scalable, maintainable, innovative, and aligned with user workflows.

Requirements

• Strong 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 reliable real-world solutions.
• Comfort releasing prototypes, collecting feedback, and iterating quickly.
• Proven initiative, ownership, and ability to define scope in ambiguous environments.
• 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 Go, C++, or Rust.
• Proven experience delivering software to production that is actively used by customers or users.
• Experience working in 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 or data lakes.
• Experience building tools for data engineering.

Work Environment

This is a remote opportunity for applicants located in Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ireland, or Germany. Grafana Labs is a remote-first company that works primarily asynchronously and communicates extensively in writing.

Compensation and Benefits

• Spain base compensation range: EUR 83,000–EUR 103,700 per year.
• Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are included with all roles.
• 100% remote, global culture.
• Career growth pathways and an innovation-driven environment.
• In-person onboarding.
• Global annual leave policy of 30 days per year, including three Grafana Shutdown Days, subject to local legislation.