Staff Backend Engineer - Grafana Second Horizon

Details

Overview

Grafana Labs, the company behind the open observability cloud, is hiring a Staff-level Backend Engineer for the Grafana Second Horizon initiative. This role is focused on building the first production services for an AI-native data intelligence / context layer management system that provides agents reliable, governed access to enterprise context (e.g., data, metadata, definitions, lineage, quality signals, and institutional knowledge).

This is a remote opportunity for applicants located in Spain, Sweden, UK, Ireland, or Germany.

Responsibilities

• Build core backend services: Design, implement, test, and operate the first services for context ingestion, context indexing, retrieval orchestration, API access, source configuration, and system administration.
• Create a scalable SaaS foundation: Help define and build the architecture for a multi-tenant service, including tenant isolation, usage tracking, quotas, audit logs, background jobs, and reliable service boundaries.
• Power agent-facing retrieval workflows: Build APIs and service interfaces for AI agents, MCP tools, CLIs, and internal applications to retrieve relevant context, provenance, confidence signals, and warnings.
• Work across product and infrastructure: Partner with the team to balance fast experimentation with long-term reliability as the project moves from prototype to production.
• Operate what you build: Instrument services with metrics, logs, traces, alerts, and dashboards; use observability tools to understand system behavior and improve reliability.
• Contribute to technical direction: Help shape architecture, service boundaries, storage choices, API contracts, deployment patterns, and engineering practices for a new product area.
• Effective communication: Communicate effectively and contribute across teams in a highly dynamic environment.
• Ownership and impact: Take full ownership of AI solutions, ensuring they are innovative, scalable, maintainable, and aligned with real user workflows.

Requirements

• Strong engineering skills: Experience building production-grade, user-facing software systems; self-starter capable of tackling complex problems.
• AI experience with a practical mindset: Familiar with AI technologies and frameworks; focus on delivering working solutions.
• Quick iteration and experimentation: Comfortable releasing prototypes, collecting feedback, and iterating pragmatically.
• Proven initiative: Ability to drive projects forward, handle ambiguity, and define scope.
• Collaborative attitude: Effective communication; open to feedback; solutions-oriented.
• Experience with LLMs / prompt engineering / GenAI applications.
• Production track record: Delivered software that is in production and actively used by users.
• Cloud-native exposure: Experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Observability tools experience: Use observability tools to understand and troubleshoot system behavior.

Bonus Points

• Experience building tools for agent frameworks or multi-agent workflows.
• Experience as a data analyst or work with data platforms (e.g., Looker, Tableau, PowerBI, Snowflake, DataBricks).
• Experience building tools for data engineering.

How the team works

Remote-first team that meets regularly over video and does most work asynchronously in writing.

Compensation & Rewards

In Germany, the base compensation range for this role is EUR 109,709 - EUR 131,651. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skillset.
Benefits include equity, bonus (if applicable), and other benefits listed on the company careers site.