Software Engineer - OpenTelemetry

Grafana Cloud is our composable observability platform that integrates metrics, logs, and traces with Grafana. It allows our customers to leverage the best open source observability software - including Prometheus, Mimir, Loki, and Tempo - without the overhead of installing, maintaining and scaling their own observability stack

The Observability department is focused on enabling developers to understand the health and performance of their applications and infrastructure in any environment by providing tools to instrument their code, ingest observability data into Grafana Cloud and visualize and explore it.

As a company we are remote-first and global, we embrace people of different experiences and backgrounds to build diverse teams where every person brings a unique perspective to the software. We are looking for Engineers that are passionate about communicating with data and providing seamless experiences for our customers to join our growing team! Engineers at Grafana also have the opportunity to contribute to Open Source communities.

What You'll Be Doing:

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help shape Grafana Labs' work in the OpenTelemetry ecosystem.

In this role, you will contribute to strategic OpenTelemetry projects, work with upstream open source communities, and help define how Grafana Labs supports and advances OpenTelemetry adoption. You will combine strong software engineering skills with technical leadership, community collaboration, and a customer-focused approach to observability.

This role is a strong fit for someone who enjoys building production-quality software, working across organizational boundaries, and helping others adopt best practices around instrumentation, telemetry pipelines, semantic conventions, and observability architecture.

• Contribute to OpenTelemetry components and related open source projects across the ecosystem.
• Help define and execute Grafana Labs' technical strategy for OpenTelemetry.
• Collaborate with upstream maintainers, contributors, and users in open source communities.
• Serve as an OpenTelemetry expert within Grafana Labs and externally, promoting best practices around instrumentation, semantic conventions, and telemetry collection.
• Build clean, robust, performant software that can be maintained and extended by others.
• Partner with Product, Support, GTM, and other engineering teams to connect customer needs with technical direction.
• Mentor engineers across levels through design reviews, code reviews, technical guidance, and open collaboration.
• Write documentation, examples, blog posts, or other technical materials that help users and internal teams understand OpenTelemetry.

• You have strong experience with at least one systems or backend programming language.

• Experience with Golang, Rust or Java is strongly preferred.

• Experience with C, C++, or similar languages can also translate well.

You have experience with, or a strong desire to contribute to, open source communities.

You have experience working with observability tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, or similar technologies from a developer's perspective.

You write software that is reliable, maintainable, and understandable to other engineers.

You are comfortable taking ownership of ambiguous technical problems and driving them from discovery through delivery.

You have experience with cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, or systems engineering.

You communicate clearly in writing and in conversation, especially in remote and async environments.

Bonus Points For:

• Existing involvement in the OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, or the broader observability ecosystem.
• Experience contributing to or maintaining open source projects.
• Experience setting technical direction for a project or team.
• Experience with microservices, telemetry pipelines, distributed tracing, metrics, logs, or production debugging.
• Experience operating production services, participating in on-call, or improving reliability for customer-facing systems.
• Experience creating technical content such as documentation, examples, tutorials, or blog posts.

What you'll bring to the role

At Grafana Labs, we define senior engineering roles by scope of impact, ownership, and judgment. For this role, we are looking for someone who can lead technical work in the open, collaborate with upstream communities, and contribute to Grafana Labs' long-term OpenTelemetry strategy.

You should be curious, pragmatic, and comfortable learning new technologies. You should enjoy understanding how systems behave in production, helping customers and colleagues solve difficult problems, and sharing what you learn with others.

Because Grafana Labs is remote-first, strong written communication, independent execution, and regular collaboration over video and async channels are important parts of how we work.

In the United States, the Base compensation range for this role is USD 154,000 - USD 193,000. 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.

The Senior Software Engineer will contribute to OpenTelemetry projects, ensuring best practices in observability, mentoring engineers, and collaborating with open source communities. The summary above was generated by AI Grafana Labs is a remote-first, open-source powerhouse. There are more than 20M users of Grafana, the open source visualization tool, around the globe, monitoring everything from beehives to climate change in the Alps. The instantly recognizable dashboards have been spotted everywhere from a NASA launch and Minecraft HQ to Wimbledon and the Tour de France. Grafana Labs also helps more than 3,000 companies -- including Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase, and eBay -- manage their observability strategies with the Grafana LGTM Stack, which can be run fully managed with Grafana Cloud or self-managed with the Grafana Enterprise Stack, both featuring scalable metrics (Grafana Mimir), logs (Grafana Loki), and traces (Grafana Tempo). We're scaling fast and staying true to what makes us different: an open-source legacy, a global collaborative culture, and a passion for meaningful work. Our team thrives in an innovation-driven environment where transparency, autonomy, and trust fuel everything we do. You may not meet every requirement, and that's okay. If this role excites you, we'd love you to raise your hand for what could be a truly career-defining opportunity., *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. Why You'll Thrive at Grafana Labs: * 100% Remote, Global Culture - As a remote-only company, we bring together talent from around the world, united by a culture of collaboration and shared purpose. * Scaling Organization - Tackle meaningful work in a high-growth, ever-evolving environment. * Transparent Communication - Expect open decision-making and regular company-wide updates. * Innovation-Driven - Autonomy and support to ship great work and try new things. * Open Source Roots - Built on community-driven values that shape how we work. * Empowered Teams - High trust, low ego culture that values outcomes over optics. * Career Growth Pathways - Defined opportunities to grow and develop your career. * Approachable Leadership - Transparent execs who are involved, visible, and human. * Passionate People - Join a team of smart, supportive folks who care deeply about what they do. * In-Person onboarding - We want you to thrive from day 1 with your fellow new 'Grafanistas' to learn all about what we do and how we do it. * Balance is Key - We operate a global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum. 3 days of your annual leave entitlement are reserved for Grafana Shutdown Days to allow the team to really disconnect. *We will comply with local legislation where applicable. Equal Opportunity Employer: We will recruit, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, disability, age, veteran status, and all the other fascinating characteristics that make us different and unique. We believe that equality and diversity builds a strong organization and we're working hard to make sure that's the foundation of our organization as we grow.