Staff Backend Software Engineer – Databases – Loki Ingest

Grafana Labs; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading open-source observability company is looking for a proactive engineer to influence product roadmaps and collaborate effectively in a remote environment. Candidates should have solid programming experience, preferably in Go, and an understanding of cloud software. This role embraces a culture of transparency and autonomy, promoting career growth and innovation in a global setting.

Benefits

30 days annual leave

RSUs included

In-person onboarding

Qualifications

• Solid experience with a programming language, preferably Go.
• Experience delivering projects from requirements to shipping.
• Some experience with cloud-based software or systems engineering.

Responsibilities

• Influence roadmap and career objectives.
• Deliver new features and iterate based on results.
• Drive projects from ideation to operations.

Skills

Motivated self-starter

Customer-focused

Strong collaboration and communication

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Job description

Overview

Grafana Labs is a remote-first, open-source company with a global customer base. Our dashboards are used for diverse applications—from beehives to climate research. We offer Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise Stack, with scalable metrics, logs, and traces.

We are remote-first and global, valuing transparency, autonomy, and trust. This role is open to applicants based in Spain, Germany, the UK, or Sweden at this time.

The Opportunity

Grafana Cloud is our composable observability platform that integrates metrics, logs, and traces with Grafana. It enables customers to use the best open-source observability software—Prometheus, Mimir, Loki, and Tempo—without the overhead of installing and managing their own stack.

The Databases team owns the telemetry databases for Mimir (metrics), Loki (logs), Tempo (traces), and Pyroscope (profiles). Our databases are OSS projects offered as a Cloud service and as an on-premise solution. They are multi-tenant distributed systems built in Go, running on Kubernetes across major cloud providers. We also have engineers working on Prometheus, Grafana Agent, Mimir proxies, and OpenTelemetry.

As a remote-first company, we embrace diverse experiences and backgrounds to build inclusive, high-performing teams. Our tech stack is primarily Go services on Kubernetes, leveraging cloud object storage.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Take an active role in influencing our roadmap and your own career objectives
• Collaborate with your team to deliver new features and iterate based on results
• Drive projects from ideation to operations in the hands of customers
• Contribute to open-source projects beyond your immediate scope
• Design, build, operate, and maintain critical systems with focus on reliability, performance, and availability
• Participate in on-call rotations and own the services you run
• Mentor teammates, participate in design discussions, and collaborate across teams
• Learn new skills and gain a deeper understanding of our cloud product and distributed codebase

Because we are remote-first, independent work and clear communication are essential.

What Makes You a Great Fit

• Motivated self-starter with a bias toward action
• Customer-focused, with a passion for building intuitive products
• Pragmatic, able to break down complex challenges and iterate with short feedback loops
• Strong collaboration and communication in a fully remote setup

Requirements

• Solid experience with at least one programming language; Go is used, but Python, C, C++, Rust or similar experience is valuable
• Experience delivering projects from requirements to shipping with self-driven initiative
• Some experience with cloud-based software or systems engineering
• Experience writing clean, robust, and maintainable software

Bonus Points For

• Experience with Kubernetes and/or Docker
• Experience as a Grafana/Prometheus user in operational roles or on-call
• Familiarity with microservices and distributed systems, and a desire to learn
• On-call experience or familiarity with infrastructure as code

Compensation & Rewards

In Sweden, base compensation ranges from SEK 836,000 to SEK 1,004,089. Actual compensation varies by level, experience, and skillset. All roles include RSUs. We align incentives with company success as we scale globally.

Compensation ranges are country-specific. If applying from a location not listed above, the recruiter will discuss the market pay range and benefits at the start of the process.

Why You’ll Thrive at Grafana Labs

• 100% Remote, Global Culture
• Scaling Organization
• Transparent Communication
• Innovation-Driven
• Open Source Roots
• Empowered Teams
• Career Growth Pathways
• Approachable Leadership
• Passionate People
• In-Person Onboarding
• Balance is Key: 30 days annual leave; 3 days Grafana Shutdown Days

Equal Opportunity Employer: We recruit and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, disability, age, veteran status, or other differences. We are committed to equality and diversity.

Note: Grafana Labs may use AI tools in recruitment to help match CVs to postings; recruitment will still involve manual review for alignment.

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