Staff Software Engineer – Identity And Access, Identity Squads

Details

Grafana Labs is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to define the technical direction for authentication systems within the Identity squad. The role focuses on redesigning Grafana’s authentication at the edge and building secure, low-latency infrastructure used by millions of users.

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 and flows including MCP OAuth (OAuth 2.1), OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM.

Responsibilities

• Spend approximately 55% of the time on backend development with Golang, 25% on technical leadership and cross-team collaboration, and 20% on 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 spanning multiple services and teams.
• Mentor and develop senior engineers through technical guidance, design feedback, and professional support.
• Serve as a technical authority for identity protocols, driving alignment on 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.
• Collaborate with engineering leadership, product management, and cross-functional partners.
• Design and operate systems in critical service hot paths where performance and reliability are essential.

Requirements

• Deep, proven expertise in distributed systems engineering with Go and a track record of owning and delivering large-scale production systems end-to-end.
• Ability to define technical direction and drive architectural decisions independently, with impact beyond the immediate team.
• Extensive experience building and operating low-latency, high-throughput services in distributed, multi-tenant environments.
• Experience leading complex, multi-quarter initiatives spanning multiple teams or systems.
• Ability to mentor and develop senior engineers.
• Strong understanding of SLOs, SLIs, error budgets, and balancing 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 how to implement them securely at scale.
• An independent attitude and strong communication skills for remote-first collaboration.

Bonus Points

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

Benefits

• Equity and bonus, if applicable.
• 100% remote global culture.
• Career growth pathways.
• In-person onboarding.
• Global annual leave policy of 30 days per year, including 3 Grafana Shutdown Days.
• Transparent communication, empowered teams, and an open-source-focused culture.

Grafana Labs is an equal opportunity employer. The company may use AI tools to assist in matching CV information to job postings, while recruitment teams continue to manually review applications.