Staff Software Engineer - Grafana Cloud K6

📍 Ireland
EUR 117,600-141,100 per year
SENIOR
✅ Remote

Used Tools & Technologies

Not specified

Required Skills & Competences

Security @ 4 Docker @ 4 Go @ 7 Grafana @ 4 Kubernetes @ 4 DevOps @ 7 Python @ 7 Distributed Systems @ 4 Leadership @ 7 AWS @ 4 Communication @ 4 JavaScript @ 4 SRE @ 7 Prioritization @ 4 Reporting @ 4 Observability @ 4 AI @ 4 Change Management @ 4

Details

Grafana Labs is a remote-first, open-source company building observability and performance testing products. This opportunity is with the Grafana Cloud k6 squad, which builds and operates Grafana Cloud k6 and Grafana Cloud Synthetics — a performance testing product used to run distributed tests from many regions and ingest large volumes of test data. This is a remote opportunity; applicants in Ireland time zones are preferred. The role focuses on establishing and scaling a cross-team culture of engineering excellence and strong DevOps/SRE practices, and is expected to grow into broader application and product development leadership over time.

Responsibilities

  • Build and scale a strong culture of operational excellence by defining standards and coaching teams to own reliability and availability.
  • Drive DevOps/SRE practices including incident response and post-incident reviews (PIRs), on-call readiness, runbooks, alerting, observability, and release/change management.
  • Establish reliability frameworks such as SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets and use them to guide prioritization and engineering trade-offs.
  • Provide visibility into system health through operational metrics and reliability reporting.
  • Guide teams in design, development, evolution, and operation of large-scale distributed cloud systems.
  • Influence product and system direction through design reviews, architectural discussions, and cross-team collaboration.
  • Share knowledge via clear, high-quality documentation and technical communication, internally and when appropriate externally.
  • As the reliability foundation matures, expand into broader application and product development leadership.

Requirements

  • Strong experience with DevOps/SRE practices, including operating and evolving production systems at scale.
  • Strong programming background in a modern language; Python and Go are primary (prior experience in those exact languages is not strictly required, but a strong programming background is).
  • Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
  • Strong understanding of reliability engineering concepts (incident management, observability, failure modes).
  • Experience with test automation, including performance and functional testing.
  • Ability to influence engineering practices through clear technical communication, reviews, and collaboration.
  • Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work effectively across teams.
  • Familiarity with modern software engineering processes and delivery practices.
  • Self-driven and comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy and ambiguity.

Bonus Points

  • Experience with containerized and cloud-native systems (Docker, Kubernetes, AWS).
  • Familiarity with observability tooling and platforms (e.g., Grafana stack).
  • Experience working with Python, Go, JavaScript and/or Jsonnet.
  • Experience building or operating event-driven or asynchronous systems.
  • Experience defining or applying SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, or other reliability metrics.
  • Interest in or experience with building testing frameworks or developer tooling.

Compensation & Benefits

  • In the Republic of Ireland, the base compensation range for this role is EUR 117,600 - EUR 141,120. Actual compensation may vary by level, experience, and skillset as assessed in the interview process.
  • Benefits include equity, bonus (if applicable), other benefits referenced by Grafana Labs, 30 days annual leave per year (with 3 reserved for Grafana Shutdown Days), in-person onboarding, and additional company benefits.

Additional Details

  • Remote-first company; 100% remote culture. This posting notes interest in applicants in Ireland time zones and lists Republic of Ireland (Remote) as the location for compensation reference.
  • The team values open-source roots, transparency, autonomy, and collaboration. Grafana Labs also provides company-funded access to AI coding assistants and frontier models for developer productivity within security guidelines.