Staff Backend Engineer - Session Replay

Details

Grafana Labs is a remote-first, open-source powerhouse. There are more than 20M users of Grafana, the open source visualization tool, around the globe. Grafana Labs helps more than 3,000 companies manage their observability strategies with the Grafana Stack, available via Grafana Cloud or self-managed Grafana Enterprise Stack.

This is a remote position. We are looking for candidates in the EST or CT timezone in the United States or Canada.

The Opportunity

The Session Replay squad is building a new Grafana Cloud product that helps customers understand what users actually experienced when something goes wrong. Session Replay connects frontend signals (errors, performance, synthetic checks) to session-level evidence to enable faster investigation of production issues. The team works at the intersection of frontend observability, backend data processing and storage at scale, debugging workflows across products, privacy and access control, and performance and cost constraints at scale. A key part of the next phase is evolving the backend architecture for capturing sessions, including a migration toward columnar/analytical storage and query engine for high-volume session data.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical direction for Session Replay, spanning frontend, backend, and data systems
• Drive the evolution of backend architecture, including designing systems around columnar/analytical data storage for large-scale session data and defining data models, ingestion pipelines, and query patterns
• Lead the design of investigation workflows, connecting replay with logs, metrics, traces and other telemetry across Grafana Cloud
• Make high-leverage architectural decisions that impact multiple teams and products
• Partner with teams across Grafana (Frontend Observability, Synthetic Monitoring, Core Grafana) to build cohesive cross-product experiences
• Improve engineering standards, patterns, and operational practices within the team
• Mentor engineers and help grow technical leadership within the team

Technologies you'll work with

• Go (backend services and APIs)
• Columnar/Analytical data storage (core data storage and querying)
• Object storage (S3, GCS, Azure Blob Storage) and MySQL
• TypeScript / React (user-facing workflows)
• Grafana ecosystem (Mimir, Loki, Tempo, etc.)

Requirements / What Makes You a Great Fit

• Comfortable working in a remote-first company and strong written and spoken English communication
• Ability to reason about data-intensive systems (ingestion, storage, querying, cost trade-offs)
• Comfortable owning features in ambiguous problem spaces and working independently on a small remote team
• Good understanding of a software development process that takes a user-centered approach
• Value code maintainability, readability, and automation

Bonus Points

• Experience with columnar/analytical databases
• Experience with observability tools (Grafana, Datadog, New Relic, Sentry, etc.)
• Experience building debugging or developer-focused tools
• Familiarity with privacy, security, and access control in data-heavy systems
• Experience working on performance-sensitive systems (large datasets, real-time queries, session data)

Compensation & Rewards

In Canada, the Base compensation range for this role is CAD 186,368 - CAD 231,960. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skillset as assessed in the interview process. Benefits include equity, bonus (if applicable) and other benefits listed on Grafana's careers page. Compensation ranges are country-specific; recruiters will discuss market-specific pay ranges for other locations.

Additional Info

• Grafana Labs may utilize AI tools in its recruitment process to assist in matching CVs to job postings. The recruitment team will continue to review inbound CVs manually.
• Equal Opportunity Employer policies and in-person onboarding details are included in the original posting.