Senior Backend Engineer - Databases - Analytics

About Grafana Labs

Grafana Labs is the developer behind Grafana Cloud, a fully managed observability platform trusted by over 10,000 organizations globally for enhancing system reliability, accelerating incident resolution, and optimizing telemetry at scale. Emphasizing open source and open standards, Grafana Cloud integrates AI and observability to deliver unified visibility across diverse data environments, supporting enterprises such as Anthropic, Bloomberg, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Salesforce. The company operates fully remotely with employees in over 40 countries and is backed by leading venture capital firms.

Role Overview

Grafana Labs is rapidly growing, preserving its open-source heritage, collaborative culture, and a drive for meaningful technological contributions. This role targets applicants located in Canada or the US, supporting remote work. The position is part of a pioneering team building AI-native data intelligence systems aiming to unify enterprise data accessibility, providing reliable, governed access to metadata, lineage, and institutional knowledge to AI agents and users.

Responsibilities

• Own and develop key components of the database system including ingestion, query planning, distributed execution, and storage format design.
• Architect and construct a scalable, multi-tenant SaaS database platform with features like tenant isolation, usage monitoring, quotas, audit logs, and robust service boundaries.
• Design APIs and database interfaces enabling rapid data retrieval for AI agents, command-line tools, and internal applications.
• Collaborate across product and infrastructure teams to balance innovation speed and long-term reliability, transitioning solutions from prototypes to production-ready SaaS.
• Maintain operational responsibility for built systems through instrumentation using metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards to monitor and enhance stability.
• Influence the technical roadmap including architecture, service decomposition, storage strategy, API contracts, deployment methodologies, and engineering best practices for new product areas.
• Communicate clearly and work effectively within a dynamic, collaborative team environment.
• Demonstrate ownership to ensure database solutions are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with user requirements.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience delivering production-level, user-facing software with a self-driven approach to complex engineering challenges and architectural decision-making.
• Practical familiarity with AI technologies and frameworks, focusing on deploying effective real-world solutions.
• Comfort with rapid prototyping, iterative feedback incorporation, and pragmatic experimentation.
• Proven initiative in managing ambiguous projects by defining scope and driving impactful outcomes independently.
• Strong communication skills with a collaborative and feedback-responsive mindset.
• Experience in distributed systems, table and catalog formats, and query engine development.
• Expertise in at least one systems programming language such as Go, C++, or Rust.
• A history of deploying software that is actively utilized in production environments.
• Experience with cloud-native platforms like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure.
• Proficiency using observability tools to analyze and troubleshoot system behavior.

Desired Additional Expertise

• Building distributed query engines.
• Developing data warehouses or data lakes.
• Creating tools for data engineering workflows.

Company Culture and Work Environment

The team operates remotely with a strong emphasis on asynchronous communication, diversity of thought, creative problem-solving, and clear documentation. Employees contribute to a trusted and innovative culture, working on mission-critical applications and infrastructure monitoring for global clients.

Compensation and Benefits

The base salary range in Canada for this position is CAD 164,490 to 197,389 annually, varying by experience and skill level. All employees receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), aligning team members with company success. Compensation packages are country-specific, with recruiters discussing appropriate payscales for candidates outside Canada.

Employee Perks

• Fully remote work with a global team culture.
• Working within a rapidly scaling organization.
• Transparent communication with open decision-making processes.
• Strong focus on innovation backed by autonomy and support.
• Open source heritage influencing corporate values.
• Empowered work environment emphasizing outcomes.
• Pathways for career advancement.
• Accessible and transparent leadership.
• Supportive, passionate colleagues.
• In-person onboarding to connect new hires with team members.
• 30 days of annual leave including 3 company-wide shutdown days, compliant with local laws.

Equal Opportunity and Additional Information

Grafana Labs welcomes applicants from all backgrounds without discrimination. The recruitment process uses AI-assisted tools for CV matching alongside manual reviews. Privacy policies govern applicant data use.