Staff Backend Engineer - Databases Tempo

The Opportunity

We build Tempo, the open-source distributed tracing backend behind Grafana Cloud Traces and Grafana Enterprise Traces (GET). As we evolve Tempo from a SaaS database into a platform powering Grafana’s next-generation observability products, we are looking for a Staff Engineer to lead technical direction and operational excellence.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead technical initiatives: Drive multi-quarter projects from problem framing to rollout (e.g., trace aggregation, autoscaling, query engine improvements).
• Own architecture: Manage core components including ingestion, storage, query, and metrics generation. Drive design reviews and make trade-offs on performance and cost.
• Design APIs: Shape interfaces for humans and AI agents to ensure reliability and discoverability.
• Drive operational excellence: Own outcomes against SLOs, push for Zero Ops through automation, and participate in on-call rotations.
• Collaborate: Partner with Product and sibling teams (App Observability, Asserts, Grafana Assistant) to unblock product development.
• Mentor: Raise the engineering bar through code reviews, design feedback, and technical writing.
• Contribute to Open Source: Engage the community and steer the Tempo project in the open.

What Makes You a Great Fit

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

Bonus Points

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