Senior Backend Engineer - Observability Ingest - Kubernetes Operator/Helm Chart | UK | Remote

The Opportunity

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.

Department

The Grafana Cloud 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.

Role Overview

In this role, you will be part of the Ingest team that develops the software that helps our users to get Grafana's observability stack up and running and keep it working over time. We build and maintain the configuration and deployment tooling that bridges the gap between "I want observability" and "I have observability." To achieve this we are responsible for projects like the Kubernetes Monitoring Helm Chart, Fleet Management and the Instrumentation Hub.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Design, build and maintain user‑facing tools that support the deployment, configuration and operation of Grafana Alloy, the OpenTelemetry Collector, and related components.
• Own and evolve our Helm chart ecosystem run on more than 10k clusters and 300k nodes, writing charts that are robust, well‑tested, and a pleasure for users to use.
• Build and maintain tooling that works across platforms: Kubernetes‑first, but rock‑solid on Linux, Windows, and macOS, too.
• Support infrastructure‑as‑code integrations using ArgoCD, Terraform, Flux, and other GitOps utilities.
• Collaborate closely with support, product, and field engineering to understand real customer pain points and translate them into durable tool improvements.
• Work in the open: communicate progress transparently, review peers’ code thoughtfully, and help raise the technical bar for the whole team.
• Contribute upstream to open source projects including Grafana Alloy, OpenTelemetry, and Helm community charts.
• Represent Grafana Labs in meetups, conferences, and social media forums.

We invest heavily in developer productivity. You can use modern AI coding assistants as part of your daily workflow (your choice of tools, within security guidelines), backed by a company‑funded usage budget so you can iterate quickly without unnecessary friction. We encourage pragmatic AI‑assisted development: faster prototyping, test generation, refactors, documentation, and incident follow‑ups—always paired with strong code review and quality standards. You’ll also have access to frontier models (e.g., GPT‑Codex 5/3, Claude Opus 4.7, Gemini 3 Pro).

What Makes You a Great Fit

• You believe that great tooling is a force multiplier and you take pride in boosting the experience of the person on the other end of the tooling you build and maintain.
• You're a strong communicator, clear in code review, helpful in customer‑facing issues, and comfortable working async across time zones.
• You love writing tests and treat them as a core part of the design process, not an afterthought.
• You're comfortable going deep on a platform problem, whether that’s a Kubernetes scheduling edge case, a Windows path separator bug, or a Terraform provider quirk.
• You engage with the open source community and care about the health of the projects you depend on.
• 4 years of professional software engineering experience, with at least one major language (Go preferred; Python, Rust, and others welcome).
• Hands‑on Kubernetes experience: deploying, operating, and debugging workloads in production environments, including familiarity with Helm and the Kubernetes resource model.
• Experience building or maintaining tooling for external users or customers—you've thought carefully about API/UX design, backward compatibility, and upgrade paths.
• Comfortable writing and maintaining automated tests at multiple levels—unit, integration, and end‑to‑end.

Bonus Points For

• Direct experience with Grafana Alloy or the OpenTelemetry Collector—configuration, pipeline design, or contributing upstream.
• Experience authoring or maintaining Helm charts, especially in a community or production context.
• Experience with GitOps tooling, including Terraform, ArgoCD, or Flux.
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD).
• Experience building or contributing to developer‑facing CLIs or configuration tooling.
• Familiarity with the broader Grafana ecosystem: Loki, Mimir, Tempo, or Pyroscope.
• A history of open source contributions with evidence of community collaboration.

Compensation

In United Kingdom, the compensation range for this role is GBP 91,755 – GBP 110,106. Actual compensation may vary based on level, experience, and skillset as assessed throughout the interview process. All of our roles include Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), giving every team member ownership in Grafana Labs' success. We believe in shared outcomes—RSUs help us stay aligned and invested as we scale globally. 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.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We will recruit, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, disability, age, veteran status, and all of 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.