Staff Backend Engineer - Grafana App Platform

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Staff Backend Engineer - Grafana App Platform based in Canada.

This is a senior engineering opportunity focused on evolving a large-scale observability platform into a highly scalable, multi-tenant application platform.
You’ll work on foundational backend architecture that enables both open-source and cloud applications to integrate deeply with dashboards, alerts, incidents, and telemetry.
The role combines hands-on coding with architectural design, roadmap influence, and production operations.
You’ll tackle complex distributed-systems challenges including scalability, high availability, multi-tenancy, and data isolation.
Because changes affect a broad global user base, you’ll play a critical role in planning and safely rolling out architectural improvements without disrupting services.
The environment emphasizes autonomy, pragmatic engineering, cross-team collaboration, and continuous improvement driven by production insights.
You’ll also have access to modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping, testing, refactoring, documentation, and incident follow-ups.

• Build and evolve backend features while improving the operational experience of the systems you own, using production insights to continuously refine reliability, performance, and maintainability.
• Design and implement architectural improvements that support a scalable, standardized, and multi-tenant application platform for observability workloads.
• Author, contribute to, and review technical design documents, helping establish clear architectural direction and sound engineering practices.
• Take an active role in shaping the technical roadmap, balancing long-term platform evolution with practical delivery priorities.
• Collaborate across engineering teams and with external stakeholders to ensure platform changes are aligned with broader product and technical needs.
• Mentor and support other engineers, sharing knowledge and helping raise engineering quality across the organization.
• Participate in weekday 12-hour x 5-day and separate weekend 24-hour x 2-day on-call rotations, taking ownership of the customer experience and production reliability.
• Use AI coding assistants where appropriate to accelerate development, testing, refactoring, documentation, and incident follow-up while maintaining strong review and quality standards.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering and coding experience combined with hands-on operational experience, including responsibility for running and supporting software you have built.
• Proven experience working with SaaS platforms at scale and solving distributed-systems challenges such as scalability, multi-tenancy, data isolation, and high availability.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical ideas clearly and select the appropriate communication approach for different situations.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, including the ability to make plans transparent, align stakeholders, incorporate feedback, and coordinate work across multiple teams.
• A pragmatic, outcome-oriented mindset with the ability to prioritize progress over perfection, navigate ambiguity, and make sound decisions in evolving environments.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals and an interest in building reliable, maintainable, and scalable platform infrastructure.
• Experience with Golang is valuable; candidates without prior Go experience should be comfortable learning and adopting the language.
• A collaborative, low-ego approach and willingness to contribute beyond the boundaries of an individual team or squad.

Benefits

• 100% remote work with a globally distributed team and a collaborative remote-first culture.
• Country-specific compensation: the source posting provides a U.S. range of $174,986–$209,983 USD ; compensation for Canada is determined according to the applicable local market range.
• Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are included in roles, providing employees with an ownership stake and alignment with long-term organizational success.
• 30 days of annual leave per year , with 3 days reserved for designated shutdown days, subject to applicable local legislation.
• Career development opportunities within a high-growth, scaling organization.
• High-trust environment with autonomy, transparent communication, and empowered teams.
• Access to modern AI coding assistants and a company-funded usage budget, within applicable security guidelines.
• Access to advanced AI models and tools to support development workflows.
• In-person onboarding designed to help new team members connect with colleagues and understand the organization’s culture and ways of working.
• An innovation-focused environment grounded in open-source values, collaboration, and meaningful technical work.