Staff Backend Engineer – Databases

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Spearhead extensive technical projects spanning multiple quarters, from defining problems to implementation, such as trace aggregation APIs, Limitless Tempo, autoscaling cells, customer limits, or enhancements to the query engine.

• Take ownership of the architecture for essential Tempo components, including ingestion, storage, querying, and metrics generation. Facilitate design reviews, make informed trade-offs regarding performance, cost, and complexity, and document the rationale for the team.

• Create user-friendly APIs for both humans and agents. Shape the future of Tempo's interfaces (structured, deterministic, and discoverable) to enable Act 3 products, LLM-driven assistants, and external integrators to build upon Tempo reliably.

• Promote operational excellence. Own results against specific SLOs (P99 write latency, incident recurrence, TCO per ingested GB) and drive the team towards Zero Ops through automation, parameterized rollouts, and actionable alerts.

• Collaborate with Product and adjacent teams. Work closely with PMs and teams such as App Observability, Asserts, Drilldown, and Grafana Assistant to understand how Tempo is utilized and deliver solutions that remove obstacles for them.

• Mentor fellow engineers. Elevate the engineering standards through code reviews, design feedback, collaborative problem-solving, and documentation that enhances team knowledge.

• Engage in on-call duties for the services you help create, acting as a force multiplier in incident response and post-incident analysis.

• Contribute to the open-source community. As Tempo is open-source, you will interact with the community, evaluate external contributions, and help guide the project transparently.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven technical leadership. A history of leading intricate, multi-quarter projects that encompassed design, delivery, and operations, while enhancing the capabilities of surrounding teams.

• Extensive systems experience. Significant hands-on experience in building and operating distributed data systems in production, such as ingestion pipelines, storage engines, query execution, or similar systems.

• Strong software craftsmanship. You produce clean, robust, and high-performance software that is maintainable by others, knowing when to optimize versus when to deliver.

• Proficient in Go, or a clear path to proficiency. Tempo is developed in Go, and deep experience with other systems languages (Rust, C, C++) is applicable.

• Operational mindset. You have experience managing production services, being on-call, minimizing toil, and viewing SLOs as a key product feature rather than a burden.

• Customer-centric and pragmatic approach. You decompose complex issues into shorter feedback cycles: analyze, design, deliver an MVP, learn, and iterate.

• Leadership through effective writing and collaboration. You guide through design documents, reviews, and delivered code rather than through hierarchy. You communicate effectively in a completely remote, asynchronous setting.

🏝️ Benefits

• 100% Remote, Global Culture

• Scaling Organization – Engage in significant work within a high-growth, dynamic environment.

• Transparent Communication – Anticipate open decision-making and regular company-wide updates.

• Innovation-Driven – Enjoy the autonomy and support to produce excellent work and explore new ideas.

• Open Source Roots – Founded on community-driven principles that influence our work culture.

• Empowered Teams – A culture of high trust and low ego that prioritizes outcomes over appearances.

• Career Growth Pathways – Clear opportunities for professional growth and development.

• Approachable Leadership – Transparent executives who are involved, accessible, and relatable.

• Passionate People – Join a team of intelligent, supportive individuals who are deeply committed to their work.

• In-Person Onboarding – We want you to thrive from day one alongside fellow new 'Grafanistas' to learn all about our operations and methodologies.

• Balance is Key – We implement a global annual leave policy of 30 days per year, with 3 days reserved for Grafana Shutdown Days to allow the team to truly disconnect. *We will comply with local legislation where applicable.