Staff Software Engineer – Identity and Access, Identity Squads

📍 Germany
📍 Spain
📍 United Kingdom
📍 Ireland
📍 Sweden

EUR 117,000-147,000 per year

SENIOR

✅ Remote

Tech Stack
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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 @ 7 Go @ 7 Grafana @ 3 Kubernetes @ 3 OAuth @ 4 Observability @ 3 OpenTelemetry @ 3 Prometheus @ 3 React @ 4 Security @ 7 Technical Leadership TypeScript @ 4

Details

Grafana Labs is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Identity squad. The team owns authentication systems across Grafana’s open-source and proprietary codebases and implements protocols including MCP OAuth (OAuth 2.1), OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM.

The role will help redesign Grafana’s authentication at the edge, supporting critical, low-latency service paths used by millions of users.

Responsibilities

Dedicate approximately 55% of time to backend development in Go, 25% to technical leadership and cross-team collaboration, and 20% to operations and reliability.
Define and own the technical architecture for authentication systems, including the edge authentication redesign.
Lead the design and implementation of large-scale, multi-quarter initiatives spanning multiple services and teams.
Mentor and develop senior engineers through technical guidance, design feedback, and career support.
Serve as a technical authority for OAuth, OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM implementations.
Drive cross-team alignment on authentication standards, patterns, and engineering best practices.
Represent Grafana Labs at meetups and conferences and contribute to the identity and authentication community.
Operate effectively in a remote-first environment using written communication and video calls.

Requirements

Deep, proven expertise in distributed systems engineering with Go and experience owning large-scale production systems end to end.
Experience defining technical direction and making architectural decisions with impact beyond an immediate team.
Extensive experience building and operating low-latency, high-throughput services in distributed, multi-tenant environments.
Proven experience leading complex, multi-quarter initiatives across multiple teams or systems.
Ability to mentor and develop senior engineers.
Strong understanding of SLOs, SLIs, error budgets, reliability, security, and product velocity.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
Expert-level understanding of modern identity standards and threat models, including OAuth 2.x / 2.1, OIDC, and SAML, and experience implementing them securely at scale.

Bonus Points

Familiarity with Kubernetes.
TypeScript and React experience.
Experience with OpenFGA and KiFederate IDP.
Experience in security-critical environments.
Contributions to or maintenance of open-source projects.
Familiarity with observability tooling such as Grafana, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry.

Benefits

Equity and bonus, if applicable.
100% remote work and a global culture.
In-person onboarding.
30 days of annual leave, including three Grafana Shutdown Days, subject to local legislation.
Career growth opportunities and a transparent, collaborative work environment.

The role is available to candidates located in the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland, and Sweden. In Ireland, the base compensation range is €117,000–€147,000. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skill set.