Staff Software Engineer – Identity and Access, Identity Squads
at Grafana Labs
EUR 117,000-147,000 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.
Security @ 7
Go @ 4
Grafana @ 4
Kubernetes @ 3
Prometheus @ 3
TypeScript @ 4
Distributed Systems @ 4
Leadership @ 4
Communication @ 4
React @ 4
Technical Leadership @ 4
OAuth @ 4
OpenTelemetry @ 3
Observability @ 4
AI @ 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 the company behind the open observability cloud and is a 100% remote company with a global engineering organization. The Identity and Access team manages authentication and authorization across Grafana’s open-source and proprietary codebases. The Identity squad owns the authentication layer and implements protocols such as MCP OAuth (OAuth 2.1), OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM. The team is redesigning Grafana’s authentication at the edge to improve performance and scale.
This role is available for candidates located in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Ireland, and Sweden. The position is remote-first and will involve regular video-based collaboration.
Responsibilities
- Set technical direction for authentication systems and own architecture for the Identity squad’s authentication systems, including an edge authentication redesign.
- Approximately 55% backend development (Golang), 25% technical leadership and cross-team collaboration, and 20% operations and reliability.
- Lead design and implementation of large-scale, multi-quarter initiatives in critical user-interaction paths spanning multiple services and teams.
- Mentor and develop senior engineers; provide technical guidance and design feedback.
- Serve as a technical authority for identity protocols and drive alignment on how Grafana implements and evolves OAuth, OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM.
- 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 (Golang) and a track record of owning and delivering large-scale production systems end-to-end.
- Demonstrated ability to define technical direction and drive architectural decisions with organization-wide impact.
- Extensive experience building and operating low-latency, high-throughput services in distributed, multi-tenant environments.
- Proven track record leading and delivering complex, multi-quarter initiatives that span multiple teams or systems.
- Ability to mentor and develop senior engineers and elevate technical quality.
- 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.
- 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 and 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).
Compensation & Rewards
- In Ireland, the base compensation range for this role is €117,000 - €147,000. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skillset as assessed in the interview process. Benefits may include equity, bonus (if applicable), and other benefits as listed by Grafana Labs.
- Compensation ranges are country specific; if applying from a different location the recruiter will discuss the market-specific pay range and benefits.
Additional Notes
- The company operates 100% remotely and provides in-person onboarding. Grafana Labs has a global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum (with 3 days reserved for Grafana Shutdown Days) and will comply with local legislation where applicable.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Grafana Labs is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from everyone regardless of protected characteristics. The company may utilize AI tools in its recruitment process to assist in matching CVs to job postings; inbound CVs will continue to be reviewed manually by the recruitment team.