Staff Backend Software Engineer - Loki | NASA | Remote

📍 Canada

CAD 186,500-223,500 per year

SENIOR

✅ Remote

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

AI @ 7 AWS Azure Communication @ 7 Distributed Systems @ 6 GCP Go @ 3 Grafana @ 4 IaC Kubernetes @ 4 Microservices @ 6 Observability Prometheus @ 4 Python @ 3 Rust @ 3 SRE @ 3 Security @ 7

Details

Grafana Labs is seeking a Staff Backend Software Engineer to work on Loki within the Databases team. The role focuses on building and operating critical components of Grafana Cloud's observability platform.

Grafana Cloud integrates metrics, logs, traces, and profiles with Grafana. The Databases team owns the telemetry databases Mimir, Loki, Tempo, and Pyroscope. These open-source projects are also offered as cloud services and on-premises solutions. They are multi-tenant distributed systems implemented in Go and running on Kubernetes across GCP, Azure, and AWS.

The company is remote-first and uses modern AI coding assistants, including frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, within security guidelines and with strong code review and quality standards.

Responsibilities

Design, build, operate, and maintain critical systems, owning their reliability, performance, and availability.
Influence the roadmap and define career objectives.
Deliver new features and iterate based on results.
Drive projects from initial ideation through production operations.
Contribute to open-source projects, including projects outside the team's direct scope.
Participate in on-call rotations and take ownership of operated services.
Mentor and support team members.
Participate in design discussions and collaborate across the team.
Develop a deeper understanding of Grafana Cloud, its customers, and the codebase of a large distributed system.

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 ideation through shipping products to customers.
Experience developing cloud software or working in systems engineering.
Experience writing clean, robust, performant, and maintainable software.
Self-directed, action-oriented approach.
Customer-focused mindset and interest in creating intuitive products.
Ability to break down complex challenges, design modular solutions, deliver MVPs, gather feedback, and iterate.
Strong collaboration and communication skills for working in a fully remote environment.

Bonus Qualifications

Experience writing low-level code for databases, storage layers, or query engines.
Experience working with Kubernetes.
Experience using Grafana and/or Prometheus in operational roles, including on-call work or hobby and homelab projects.
Exposure to microservices architecture and distributed systems, or a desire to learn.
Familiarity with on-call work, operations, SRE tasks, or infrastructure as code.

Benefits

Equity, bonus where applicable, and other benefits.
100% remote, global work culture.
Company-funded usage budget for AI coding assistants.
In-person onboarding.
30 days of annual leave per year, including three Grafana Shutdown Days, subject to local legislation.
Career growth opportunities and a transparent, collaborative culture.

Compensation

For candidates in Canada, the listed base compensation range is CAD 186,500 to AUD 223,500. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skill set. Compensation ranges and benefits are country-specific.