Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Loki Query

Details

Grafana Labs is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join the Databases team, which owns the telemetry databases powering Grafana Cloud, including Mimir for metrics, Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, and Pyroscope for profiles.

The databases are open-source, multi-tenant distributed systems implemented in Go and running on Kubernetes across GCP, Azure, and AWS. The role focuses on Loki Query and involves designing, building, operating, and maintaining critical systems for Grafana Cloud, on-premise deployments, and open-source projects.

Grafana Labs is a remote-first company. Applicants based in Spain, Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, or Sweden are currently being considered.

Responsibilities

• Influence the product roadmap and define career objectives.
• Work with the team to deliver new features and iterate based on results.
• Drive projects from initial ideation through production operations.
• Contribute to open-source projects beyond the immediate team’s scope.
• Design, build, operate, and maintain critical systems, taking ownership of reliability, performance, and availability.
• Participate in on-call rotations and own the services you operate.
• Support team members, participate in design discussions, and collaborate in a fully remote environment.
• Develop a deeper understanding of Grafana Cloud, its customers, and the codebase of a large distributed system.
• Use modern AI coding assistants for prototyping, test generation, refactoring, documentation, and incident follow-ups, subject to security guidelines and code review standards.

Requirements

• Solid experience with at least one programming language. Grafana Labs primarily uses Go; familiarity with Python, C, C++, Rust, or similar languages is also relevant.
• Experience delivering projects from requirements gathering and brainstorming through product delivery in a self-directed manner.
• Experience developing software that runs in the cloud or experience with systems engineering.
• Experience writing clean, robust, performant, and maintainable software.
• A self-starting attitude and a bias toward action.
• Customer focus and an interest in creating intuitive products that meet customer needs.
• Pragmatic problem-solving skills, including breaking down complex challenges, designing modular solutions, delivering MVPs, and iterating using data and feedback.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills for working effectively in a remote team.

Bonus Points

• Experience with Kubernetes and/or Docker.
• Experience using Grafana and Prometheus in operational roles, including on-call, or through hobby and home-lab projects.
• Exposure to microservices architecture and distributed systems.
• Experience with on-call operations, SRE tasks, or infrastructure as code.

Technologies

• Go
• Python, C, C++, or Rust
• Kubernetes
• Docker
• Grafana
• Prometheus
• Mimir
• Loki
• Tempo
• Pyroscope
• OpenTelemetry
• Microservices
• Distributed systems
• Cloud object storage
• GCP, Azure, and AWS

Benefits

• Base compensation in Germany of €97,000–€121,000 per year.
• Equity and bonus, where applicable.
• Remote-first global culture.
• Company-funded usage budget for AI coding assistants.
• In-person onboarding.
• Global annual leave policy of 30 days per year, including three Grafana Shutdown Days.
• Career growth opportunities and transparent communication.