Staff Backend Engineer - Databases Tempo

The Opportunity

Grafana Labs is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to lead technical initiatives for Tempo, our open-source distributed tracing backend. As we evolve Tempo from a SaaS database into a platform powering next-gen observability products (App Observability, Asserts, and AI-driven assistants), you will solve complex challenges in scale, performance, and API design.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Technical Leadership: Lead multi-quarter initiatives from problem framing to rollout.
• Architecture: Own core Tempo components (ingestion, storage, query, metrics generation) and drive design reviews.
• API Design: Shape interfaces for humans and AI agents to ensure reliability and discoverability.
• Operational Excellence: Own outcomes against SLOs, push for Zero Ops, and participate in on-call rotations.
• Collaboration: Partner with Product and sibling teams to unblock downstream consumers.
• Mentorship: Raise the engineering bar through code reviews, design feedback, and technical writing.
• Open Source: Engage with the community and steer the Tempo project in the open.

What Makes You a Great Fit

• Systems Expertise: Substantial experience building and operating distributed data systems in production.
• Technical Leadership: Proven track record of leading complex, multi-quarter initiatives.
• Software Craftsmanship: Ability to write clean, performant, and maintainable code.
• Language Proficiency: Strong Go experience, or deep expertise in other systems languages (Rust, C, C++).
• Operational Mindset: Experience owning production services and treating SLOs as product features.
• Communication: Ability to lead through design docs and asynchronous collaboration in a remote environment.

Bonus Points

• Experience with OpenTelemetry, tracing, or large-scale observability systems.
• Experience designing query languages or APIs for programmatic/AI consumption.
• Familiarity with columnar storage formats (e.g., Parquet) or analytical workloads.
• Experience operating multi-tenant, multi-cell SaaS infrastructure on Kubernetes.
• Open-source maintainership or community engagement experience.

Why You’ll Thrive at Grafana Labs

• Remote-First Culture: 100% remote company with a global, collaborative team.
• Growth: Tackle meaningful work in a high-growth, innovation-driven environment.
• Ownership: All roles include Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).
• Balance: Global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum, including company shutdown days.