Staff Tempo Database Engineer at Grafana Labs

Role overview

Tempo powers tracing in Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise Traces. The staff engineer guides its ingestion, storage, query and metrics architecture as the service grows and supports observability products and AI-assisted investigation. These postings name European remote hiring countries.

Responsibilities

• Lead long-running engineering projects such as trace aggregation APIs, autoscaling, customer limits and query improvements.
• Own core Tempo architecture across ingestion, storage, querying and metrics generation, making explicit performance and cost tradeoffs.
• Design structured APIs that observability products, integrations and AI agents can use reliably.
• Improve service-level objectives, rollouts, alerts and operational automation as the number of service cells grows.
• Mentor engineers, review designs and code, participate in on-call and incident learning, and engage with Tempo’s open-source community.

Qualifications

• A record of leading multi-quarter technical work through design, delivery and operation.
• Deep distributed-systems and database experience relevant to high-volume tracing, query performance and cloud reliability.
• Strong Go or substantial Rust, C or C++ experience, with maintainable systems code and production on-call ownership.
• Ability to choose practical architecture under performance, cost and complexity constraints.
• Collaborative technical leadership, clear design writing and mentoring in a remote team.
• Tracing, OpenTelemetry, query languages, columnar storage, Kubernetes SaaS and open-source maintainership are useful additional experience.

Technology in this role

• C++: Strong Go or substantial Rust, C or C++ experience, with maintainable systems code and production on-call .
• Kubernetes: Tracing, OpenTelemetry, query languages, columnar storage, Kubernetes SaaS and open-source maintainership are useful additional .
• SQL: Listed by the employer as part of the role’s technical requirements.
• Go: Strong Go or substantial Rust, C or C++ experience, with maintainable systems code and production on-call .
• C: Strong Go or substantial Rust, C or C++ experience, with maintainable systems code and production on-call .
• Rust: Strong Go or substantial Rust, C or C++ experience, with maintainable systems code and production on-call .
• CAN: Design structured APIs that observability products, integrations and AI agents can use .
• Grafana: Tempo powers tracing in Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise .

Role-specific candidate guide

Preparation notes based on the employer’s stated responsibilities and qualifications.

Understanding the scope. This Staff Software Engineer - Databases, Tempo | Sweden | Remote position at Grafana Labs is best assessed through the work described in the employer’s posting, rather than the title alone. The available role overview says: “Tempo powers tracing in Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise Traces. The staff engineer guides its ingestion, storage, query and metrics architecture as the service grows and supports observability products and…” Read that statement together with the responsibilities below to understand the likely balance between delivery, coordination and technical decision-making. The role belongs to the software engineering area, but that label is only a guide to the work; the employer’s own requirements remain decisive. Before applying, check the original listing for reporting lines, product or team assignment, employment terms and any details that may have changed since this copy was checked. Where this page says a fact is not specified, treat it as an open question rather than an implied promise.

What the responsibilities signal. The posting specifically names “Lead long-running engineering projects such as trace aggregation APIs, autoscaling, customer limits and query improvements.”; “Own core Tempo architecture across ingestion, storage, querying and metrics generation, making explicit performance and cost tradeoffs.”; “Design structured APIs that observability products, integrations and AI agents can use reliably.”. For each duty, identify a project where you performed comparable work and be ready to describe the context, your own contribution, constraints, decisions, and measurable result. Explain how you moved from the initial need to implementation, review, release or operational follow-through, where those stages apply. If the work involved other teams or users, distinguish your decisions from the group’s contribution. Avoid presenting a technology keyword as proof by itself: connect it to the problem you solved, the scale or complexity involved, and what changed after your work. The source may contain additional duties; review it directly before preparing your application.

How to read the requirements. The listed qualifications include “A record of leading multi-quarter technical work through design, delivery and operation.”; “Deep distributed-systems and database experience relevant to high-volume tracing, query performance and cloud reliability.”; “Strong Go or substantial Rust, C or C++ experience, with maintainable systems code and production on-call ownership.”. Mark each requirement as demonstrated, adjacent experience or a genuine gap, then use a concise example for the first two categories. A strong example explains what you personally owned, how you made trade-offs, how you validated the result and what you learned. If the posting specifies years of experience, language ability, certifications, location or eligibility, address those facts plainly in your CV or application rather than relying on the employer to infer them. Do not claim a qualification from exposure alone. For a requirement you do not meet, describe relevant transferable experience accurately and ask the recruiter whether it is mandatory.

Technology and working evidence. The technology terms associated with this listing are C++, Kubernetes, SQL, Go.

About Grafana Labs

Grafana Labs develops Grafana Cloud and open-source observability software that helps teams examine metrics, logs and traces. The employer describes itself as a fully remote company.

Browse job categories

Related jobs

• Senior Backend Engineer, Growth and MSSP at Horizon3 — Horizon3
• Senior Backend Integrations Engineer at Horizon3 — Horizon3
• Senior Autonomous Defense Backend Engineer at Horizon3 — Horizon3
• Staff Autonomous Defense Software Engineer at Horizon3 — Horizon3
• Senior Backend Engineer, Precision Defense at Horizon3 — Horizon3
• Senior Backend Security Controls Engineer at Horizon3 — Horizon3