Staff Software Engineer – Identity and Access, Identity Squads

Grafana Labs is the company behind Grafana Cloud, a fully managed observability platform trusted by more than 10,000 organizations. We are a 100% remote company with team members across 40+ countries.

The Identity and Access team manages all aspects of authentication and authorization across open-source and proprietary codebases. The Identity squad owns the authentication layer, implementing protocols such as MCP OAuth (OAuth 2.1), OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM. We are redesigning Grafana's authentication at the edge, with code paths in critical hot paths across services.

• Set technical direction for authentication systems and lead complex initiatives from conception through delivery.
• Define and own the technical architecture for the Identity squad's authentication systems, including edge authentication redesign.
• Lead design and implementation of large-scale, multi-quarter initiatives spanning multiple services and teams.
• Mentor and develop senior engineers.
• Serve as technical authority for identity protocols, driving alignment on OAuth, OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and SCIM.
• Drive cross-team technical alignment on authentication standards and best practices.
• Represent Grafana Labs at meetups and conferences.

Approximately 55% of time on backend development (Golang), 25% on technical leadership and cross-team collaboration, and 20% on operations and reliability.

• Deep expertise in distributed systems engineering with Go.
• Track record of owning and delivering large-scale production systems end-to-end.
• Experience building and operating low-latency, high-throughput services in distributed, multi-tenant environments.
• Proven track record of leading complex, multi-quarter initiatives.
• Ability to mentor and develop senior engineers.
• Strong understanding of SLOs, SLIs, error budgets.
• Excellent communication skills in English.
• Expert-level understanding of modern identity standards and threat models (OAuth 2.x / 2.1, OIDC, SAML).

• Familiarity with Kubernetes.
• TypeScript/React experience.
• Experience with OpenFGA and KiFederate IDP.
• Experience in security critical environments.
• Open Source contributions.
• Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry).

UK base compensation range: £100,000 - £124,000. Benefits include equity, bonus (if applicable), and other benefits. Global annual leave policy of 30 days per annum, with 3 days reserved for Grafana Shutdown Days.

Apply via the Greenhouse job posting.