Staff Software Engineer – Identity And Access, Identity Squads

📍 Germany
📍 Spain
📍 United Kingdom
📍 Ireland
📍 Sweden

GBP 100,000-124,000 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.

Communication @ 6 Distributed Systems @ 6 Go @ 6 Grafana @ 3 Kubernetes @ 3 Leadership @ 6 OAuth @ 4 Observability @ 3 OpenTelemetry @ 3 Prometheus @ 3 React @ 4 Security @ 7 Technical Leadership @ 6 TypeScript @ 4

Details

Grafana Labs is scaling its Identity and Access team, which manages all aspects of authentication and authorization across Grafana’s open-source and proprietary codebases. The Identity squad owns the authentication layer, delivering the protocols and flows that determine how every Grafana user proves who they are.

The role is available for candidates located in the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland and Sweden. Grafana is a 100% remote company.

Responsibilities

Approximately 55% backend development (Golang), 25% technical leadership and cross-team collaboration, and 20% operations and reliability.
Define and own the technical architecture for the Identity squad’s authentication systems, including the edge authentication redesign.
Lead the design and implementation of large-scale, multi-quarter initiatives in the critical path of user interaction across multiple services and teams.
Mentor and develop senior engineers, providing technical guidance, design feedback, and support for their professional growth.
Serve as a technical authority for identity protocols, driving alignment on how Grafana implements and evolves OAuth, OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM across the organization.
Drive cross-team technical alignment on authentication standards, patterns, and best practices across Grafana’s engineering organization.
Represent Grafana Labs at meetups and conferences and contribute to the broader identity and authentication community.

Requirements

Deep, proven expertise in distributed systems engineering with Go, with a track record of owning and delivering large-scale production systems end-to-end.
Demonstrated ability to define technical direction and drive architectural decisions independently, with impact beyond your immediate team.
Extensive experience building and operating low-latency, high-throughput services in distributed, multi-tenant environments.
Proven track record of leading and delivering complex, multi-quarter initiatives spanning multiple teams or systems.
Ability to mentor and develop senior engineers, elevating the technical quality and capabilities of those around you.
Strong understanding of SLOs, SLIs, error budgets, and designing systems that balance reliability, security, and product velocity.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English; ability to clearly convey complex technical decisions to diverse audiences, including engineering leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
Expert-level understanding of modern identity standards and threat models (OAuth 2.x / 2.1, OIDC, SAML), and how to implement them securely at scale.

Bonus Points For

Familiarity with Kubernetes.
TypeScript/React experience.
Experience working with OpenFGA and KiFederate IDP.
Experience working in security critical environments.
Experience contributing to or maintaining Open Source projects.
Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry).