Observability Architect - Grafana Labs | $167K OTE + RSUs in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
The Observability Architect role at Grafana Labs sits at a premium intersection of technical depth and strategic customer influence—a profile increasingly valued across the SRE, platform engineering, and cloud-native ecosystems. The OTE range of $139K–$167K plus RSUs is competitive but slightly below senior TAM/Solutions Architect benchmarks at top-tier SaaS companies ($160K–$210K OTE), though Grafana's equity upside and growth stage may compensate.
Skills you'll build and deepen:
- Enterprise observability architecture with Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, and Tempo
- Kubernetes operations and cloud-native infrastructure patterns
- Customer lifecycle management and executive stakeholder communication
- Technical roadmap co-creation and ROI articulation
- Cross-functional influence (product feedback loop with Engineering/PM)
Career trajectory signals: This role builds directly toward Principal/Staff Solutions Architect, Head of Customer Engineering, or VP of Technical Success paths. Grafana's 40+ country footprint means exposure to enterprise customers at the scale of Bloomberg, NVIDIA, and Microsoft—a strong resume differentiator.
Green flags: 30 days PTO, company shutdown days, 100% remote culture, RSU ownership for all employees, and a genuinely open-source-rooted culture signal strong work-life balance intent. The explicit "high trust, low ego" framing is consistent with Grafana's public employer reputation.
Watch for: Up to 25% travel and East Coast location requirements add constraints. The role spans both deep technical work and customer relationship management—candidates who prefer one over the other may find the balance demanding.
Grafana Labs, the company behind the open observability cloud, is founded on the principles of open source, open standards, open ecosystems, and open culture. Grafana Cloud, our fully managed observability platform, is flexible and built for scale. With Grafana Cloud's actually useful AI, organizations can see, understand, and act on all their disparate data to move at the speed of their ambitions. Today, more than 35 million users and 7,000+ customers – including Anthropic, Bloomberg, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Salesforce – trust Grafana Labs to ensure reliability of their applications and systems, resolve incidents quickly, and optimize their telemetry to reduce noise and cost. We are a 100% remote company with 1,600+ team members across 40+ countries, and we're backed by leading investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, GIC, Coatue, J.P. Morgan, CapitalG, and Lead Edge Capital. Learn more at grafana.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X.
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.
The Opportunity:
At Grafana Labs, we're redefining what post-sales technical partnership looks like—and it starts with the Observability Architect. This is a role for deeply technical experts who are ready to step into strategic leadership with our most important customers. If you thrive at the intersection of systems thinking, architecture design, and customer impact—this is your stage.
As an Observability Architect, you will be the technical owner of long-term customer success. You'll architect and guide the implementation of complex observability solutions across a wide range of modern infrastructure and application environments. You'll build strategic relationships with engineers, SREs, and architects—ensuring Grafana's technology is not just deployed, but deeply embedded into mission-critical systems.
Working hand-in-hand with our Engagement Managers, you'll lead technical discovery, design, onboarding, and enablement—all with a focus on delivering tangible outcomes. You'll spot patterns, solve hard problems, and guide customers through their observability maturity curve with authority and clarity.
You'll also represent the technical voice of our customers internally—shaping product feedback and roadmap priorities by working closely with Engineering and Product Management.
This is a hands-on, high-impact role for those who want to go deep, stay technical, and directly influence customer success at scale. Join us and become part of the most respected observability team in the industry.
What You'll Be Doing:
- Serve as the primary technical point of contact for a portfolio of Grafana customers.
- Design the observability maturity journey of customers and assist them on that path.
- Provide expert-level troubleshooting and guidance to drive adoption.
- Conduct regular technical reviews and health checks to ensure client success. Assist in RCA to understand issues that affect customer satisfaction, retention, and overall product experience.
- Advise clients on best practices and strategies for leveraging our technology to achieve their business goals.
- Collaborate with clients to develop and execute technical roadmaps.
- Identify opportunities for clients to optimize their cost, expand their use of our solutions, and drive adoption of new products and features.
- Develop and maintain strong, long-term relationships with key stakeholders.
- With the support of our Engagement Managers and Onboarding Solutions Architects, own the customer lifecycle.
- Drive the adoption and effective use of our product suite within your customer portfolio to maximize their value from our platform and ensure a strong return on investment.
- Act as the voice of the customer within the company, advocating for their needs, priorities, and feature requests.
- Conduct training sessions and workshops to educate clients on our technology.
- Develop and deliver technical documentation, guides, and tutorials.
- Work alongside account teams to participate in and/or conduct regular reviews with customers to identify areas for improvement, calculate ROI, assess their satisfaction, and discuss upcoming needs and projects.
- Prepare and present reports on client metrics, achievements, and areas of focus.
What Makes You a Great Fit:
- Located on the East Coast.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Math, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
- Experience deploying and operating Kubernetes.
- 5+ years of experience in a technical support, technical account management, consulting, SE, or Professional Services role within the technology industry.
- Strong understanding of observability solutions. Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki a plus.
- Proven ability to manage multiple clients and projects simultaneously.
- Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
- Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills.
- Experience with relevant tools and technologies, e.g., CRM software, ticketing systems, specific programming languages.
- Ability to travel as needed to meet with clients (up to 25%).
- Identify and provide timely workarounds and solutions to meet a customer's business needs.
- Observability expertise, preferably at architect level.
- First-class written and oral communication skills to collaborate with our remote-first internal teams and with our worldwide customers. Ability to articulate our value proposition and the technical advantages of our products.
- Passion for solving technical challenges and bringing creative solutions to customers.
Bonus Points For:
- 2+ years of technical sales, TAM, or other post-sales technical experience, ideally with open source technologies or in the observability space.
- Strong ability to connect product usage to value (ROI).
- Experience managing the customer lifecycle effectively.
- Creative approach to solving customer adoption challenges.
- Ability to proactively assist customers with technical issues and assist in troubleshooting and root cause analysis.
- Technical mindset and a desire to grow technically. Recent grads of a coding bootcamp or candidates with previous post-sales or engineering experience are welcome—we are excited to see what unique experiences and skill sets you bring to the table!
In the US, the OTE compensation range for this role is $139,000 - $167,000. 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. *We will comply with local legislation where applicable.
Equal Opportunity Employer: Grafana Labs is an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from everyone regardless of race, colour, nationality, origin, caste, sex, gender reassignment identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief, disability, veteran status, genetic information, pregnancy, maternity, marital, family or carer status, or any other characteristic which is protected by local law. We believe that equality and diversity build a strong organisation, and we work hard to ensure that is the foundation of our organisation as we grow.
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