Staff Software Engineer - Grafana Cloud K6 | UK | Remote
at Grafana Labs
GBP 104,000-124,800 per year
Used Tools & Technologies
Not specified
Required Skills & Competences
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.
Docker @ 4
Go @ 7
Grafana @ 4
Kubernetes @ 4
DevOps @ 4
Python @ 7
Distributed Systems @ 4
Hiring @ 4
Leadership @ 4
AWS @ 4
Communication @ 4
JavaScript @ 4
SRE @ 4
Prioritization @ 4
Reporting @ 4
Observability @ 4
AI @ 4
Change Management @ 4
- 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.
Details
Grafana Labs is a remote-first, open-source company supporting more than 20M users of Grafana and helping organizations manage observability with Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise. This role is on the Grafana Cloud k6 squad, responsible for performance testing products (Grafana k6, Grafana Cloud k6, Grafana Cloud Synthetics) used to run distributed load tests from many regions and ingest large volumes of test data.
This is a remote opportunity; the team is interested in applicants in UK time zones. The role focuses on establishing and scaling a cross-team culture of engineering excellence by setting standards and guiding adoption of DevOps/SRE practices to improve reliability, availability, and operational ownership. Over time the role is expected to expand into broader application and product development leadership.
Responsibilities
- Build and scale a strong culture of operational excellence by defining standards and coaching teams to own reliability and availability.
- Drive mature DevOps/SRE practices, including incident response and 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 the 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 through high-quality documentation and technical communication internally and, where appropriate, externally.
- As the reliability foundation matures, grow into broader application and product development leadership.
- Use modern AI coding assistants as part of the development workflow (company-funded usage budget; optional).
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, though prior experience is not strictly required).
- 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 For
- Experience with containerized and cloud-native systems (Docker, Kubernetes, AWS).
- Familiarity with observability tooling and platforms (for example, the 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 reliability metrics.
- Interest in or experience with building testing frameworks or developer tooling.
Compensation & Benefits
- In the United Kingdom, the base compensation range for this role is GBP 103,958 - GBP 124,750 (actual compensation may vary by level, experience, and skillset). Benefits include equity, bonus (if applicable), and other benefits listed by Grafana Labs.
- 100% remote company with in-person onboarding. Global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum (subject to local legislation), with 3 days reserved for Grafana Shutdown Days.
Other Notes
- Grafana Labs is an equal opportunity employer and may utilize AI tools in its recruitment process. For applicants outside the listed country, recruiters will discuss country-specific pay ranges during the hiring process.