Staff Software Engineer - Databases, Tempo
Core
Architect and evolve Tempo, the open-source distributed tracing backend for Grafana Cloud, into a high-performance platform enabling next-gen observability products and AI agents.
Role type
Staff Software Engineer (Distributed Systems/Database)
Builds
Tempo (distributed tracing backend), Grafana Cloud Traces, and AI-driven observability features
Domain
Observability, Distributed Systems, Tracing, AI/LLM Integration
Deliverable
production ML models | product features | infrastructure
Required skills
Distributed systems architecture, Go, Query engine design, High-performance storage, SLO-driven operations, Technical leadership, API design for agents
Preferred skills
OpenTelemetry, TraceQL, Columnar storage (Parquet), Kubernetes multi-tenant scaling, AI/LLM interface design
Technologies
Go, Tempo, Kubernetes, TraceQL, OpenTelemetry, Parquet
Responsibilities
Own architecture of core Tempo components (ingestion, storage, query, metrics), lead multi-quarter technical initiatives, drive operational excellence and SLOs, design APIs for human and agent consumption, mentor engineers, participate in on-call and incident response, contribute to open source community
Seniority
Staff, technical leadership & hands-on architecture