Senior Backend Engineer - Databases Tempo | Canada | Remote
Core
Senior Backend Engineer owning technical direction for Tempo, the open-source distributed tracing backend for Grafana Cloud, focusing on ingestion, storage, query performance, and API evolution for AI/LLM agents.
Role type
Senior IC backend engineer (distributed systems/databases)
Builds
Tempo (distributed tracing backend), Grafana Cloud Traces, and platform enablers for next-gen observability products
Domain
Observability, distributed systems, high-scale data platforms
Required skills
Go, distributed data systems, query engines, system design, operational excellence, Kubernetes, API design, performance optimization
Preferred skills
OpenTelemetry, TraceQL, columnar storage (Parquet), multi-tenant SaaS, AI/LLM integration
Technologies
Go, Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, TraceQL, Parquet
Responsibilities
Own technical direction for major Tempo components (ingestion, storage, query); deliver multi-month projects like autoscaling and API evolution; optimize query performance and latency; build APIs for human and agent consumption; contribute to operational excellence and SLOs; mentor engineers; participate in on-call and incident response; engage with open-source community
