Senior Backend Engineer - Databases, Tempo

This is a remote position. We are looking for candidates in Spain, Germany, Sweden or the UK.

What we do

We are the developers of Tempo, an open source distributed tracing backend that is user-friendly, scalable, and a key component of Grafana Enterprise Traces (GET). Tempo allows users to easily search for traces, create metrics from spans, and connect tracing data with logs and metrics. Our team, focused on back-end development, collaborates closely with customers and the Grafana Cloud teams to provide Tempo for on-premises use and at scale in the cloud.

In our expansive domain, some of the projects we have undertaken include:

• Creating and operating distributed systems to efficiently handle tracing ingestion and queries
• Developing TraceQL, a query language specifically designed for selecting traces in Tempo, inspired by PromQL and LogQL
• Building and improving the metrics-generator, a Tempo component that generates metrics from ingested traces

Tempo is relied upon by prominent global organizations for monitoring critical applications and infrastructure. We value creativity and diverse perspectives, encouraging each team member to contribute ideas that enhance our product as a reliable tool.

What will you be doing? 

• Collaborate with your team to deliver new features, analyze outcomes, and make improvements
• Lead projects from concept to implementation, including ongoing customer support
• Design, build, operate, and maintain essential systems, ensuring reliability, performance, and availability
• Take an active role in influencing our roadmap and your own career objectives 
• Participate in on-call rotations and take responsibility for the services you oversee
• Support and mentor team members, engage in design conversations, and work closely with colleagues
• Expand your skillset by deepening your knowledge of our cloud products, understanding our customers, and learning about our codebase

What are we looking for in you? 

• You are a motivated self starter with a bias towards action.
• You are customer focused.
• We build everything with our users in mind.
• Pragmatism: You are able to take on complex challenges and break them down to achieve short feedback loops: to analyze, design, and build modular solutions, deliver MVPs, gather data and feedback and then progress iteratively.
• Collaboration and communication: The smallest unit we have is a team. You’ll be working with your teammates in a fully remote setup. Good communication skills are a must.

Requirements:

Solid experience with at least one programming language. We use Go, but if you have familiarity with Python, C, C++, Rust or similar then that translates well.

• Some experience with delivering projects from gathering requirements, brainstorming ideas all the way to shipping a product to the customer’s hands in a self-driven way.
• Some experience with developing software that runs in the Cloud or some experience with systems engineering.
• Experience writing clean, robust, and performant software that is easily maintained by others.
• Familiarity with being on-call and performing operations/SRE tasks or with the concept of infrastructure as code

Nice to haves:

• Experience working with Kubernetes
• Been a user of Grafana and Prometheus in operational roles (including on-call for your team at a previous employer or just using these tools on hobby/homelab projects)
• Exposure to microservices architecture and distributed systems, or a desire to learn
• Experience working in a fully remote, distributed environment where teams operate across multiple time zones

In the UK, the Base compensation range for this role is GPB 84,000 - GPB 101,000. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skillset as assessed in the interview process. Benefits include equity, bonus (if applicable) and other benefits listed here.

*Compensation ranges are country specific. If you are applying for this role from a different location than listed above, your recruiter will discuss your specific market’s defined pay range & benefits at the beginning of the process.