Staff Software Engineer – Identity and Access, Identity Squads

About Grafana Labs

Grafana Labs is the creator of the open observability cloud platform, built on principles of open source, open standards, and open culture. Their fully managed Grafana Cloud platform enables organizations to monitor, understand, and act upon complex data at scale, supporting more than 35 million users and over 7,000 customers worldwide including notable companies like Bloomberg, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Salesforce. Operating as a fully remote company with more than 1,600 employees across over 40 countries, Grafana Labs values transparency, autonomy, and trust in a globally collaborative and innovative environment.

Role Overview

The Staff Software Engineer on the Identity squad will take charge of the design and technical leadership of authentication systems that Grafik’s millions of users rely on daily. The team manages core aspects of authentication and authorization protocols including modern standards such as OAuth 2.1, OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM, implementing customized solutions rather than off-the-shelf options. This role heavily influences the redesign of Grafana’s edge authentication infrastructure, impacting critical performance-sensitive code used throughout the platform.

Responsibilities

• Lead backend development efforts with approximately 55% focus on Go programming.
• Provide 25% of time towards technical leadership and extensive cross-team collaboration.
• Dedicate around 20% of effort on system operations and ensuring reliability.
• Define and own technical architecture for authentication systems, including the edge redesign project.
• Lead multi-quarter, large-scale engineering projects impacting multiple teams and services.
• Mentor senior engineers to enhance technical skills, design practices, and career growth.
• Act as a technical specialist for identity protocols across the organization, advocating for standards and security best practices.
• Build consensus across engineering teams on authentication approaches and standards.
• Represent Grafana in industry events and contribute to identity and authentication communities.

Qualifications and Skills

• Extensive experience designing and operating distributed systems using Go, including delivering large, complex, scalable production systems.
• Proven capability to independently set technical direction and make impactful architectural decisions beyond the immediate team.
• Background in building low-latency, high-throughput, multi-tenant systems.
• Expertise in managing multi-team, multi-quarter initiatives successfully.
• Strong mentorship skills with ability to elevate senior engineers technically.
• Solid knowledge of service reliability concepts such as SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets, balancing security and product velocity.
• Excellent communication skills for conveying complex technical decisions to diverse audiences.
• Deep understanding of modern identity standards and security threat models including OAuth 2.x, OIDC, and SAML.

Preferred Additional Experience

• Familiarity with Kubernetes container orchestration.
• Experience with TypeScript and React frameworks.
• Hands-on use of OpenFGA and KiFederate identity providers.
• Background working in security-sensitive environments.
• Contributions to open source projects.
• Experience with observability tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, or OpenTelemetry.

Compensation and Benefits

For candidates based in Ireland, the base salary range is €117,000 to €147,000 annually, with exact compensation depending on skills and experience. Additional benefits include equity participation and bonuses where applicable. Salary ranges and benefits vary depending on country of residence.

Work Culture and Perks

• Fully remote working model with a globally distributed team.
• Strong culture of open communication and transparent decision-making.
• Emphasis on innovation and independent initiative supported by an open-source heritage.
• High trust and low ego environment focused on outcomes.
• Defined career growth paths and support for professional development.
• Visible and approachable leadership engaged with the team.
• Generous global annual leave policy with 30 days off per year, including reserved company shutdown days.
• In-person onboarding events to ensure successful integration with the team.

Equal Opportunity

Grafana Labs is committed to diversity and equal opportunity, welcoming applicants regardless of race, gender, nationality, age, disability, or other legally protected characteristics.

Additional Information

This role can be based in the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland, or Sweden. Candidates must be able to work independently and communicate effectively across remote teams, primarily via video calls. The company may use AI tools during recruitment but continues to manually review applications carefully.