Observability Architect Role at Grafana Labs + RSUs in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Compensation & Market Positioning: The OTE of $139K–$167K USD for a Technical Account Manager / Architect role at a high-growth SaaS company is competitive but not top-of-market. Senior TAMs and Solutions Architects at comparable observability/cloud companies (Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace) typically range from $150K–$200K+ OTE. The RSU component adds meaningful upside given Grafana Labs' strong investor backing (Sequoia, Lightspeed) and potential IPO trajectory.
Skills This Role Develops: This is an excellent career move for engineers transitioning into customer-facing technical leadership. You'll deepen expertise in:
- Enterprise observability architecture (Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Kubernetes)
- Technical account management and customer lifecycle ownership
- Cross-functional influence — acting as a bridge between customers, product, and engineering
- ROI storytelling and executive-level communication
Green Flags: Grafana Labs has a genuine open-source culture (not just marketing), a 30-day global PTO policy with company-wide shutdown days, and a high-trust, low-ego environment. The 1,600+ person scale means processes exist without being overly bureaucratic.
Watch Out For: The 25% travel requirement and PST timezone lock-in reduce flexibility. The role straddles technical depth and account management — candidates who want to go purely deep on engineering may find the customer-facing demands stretch their time. Ensure alignment with your longer-term career direction before committing.
Headquarters: United States (Remote)
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 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 West 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 worldwide customers. Ability to articulate our value proposition and the technical advantages of our products.
- A love of solving technical challenges and a drive to bring 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.
- Great at connecting product usage to value (ROI).
- Great at managing customer lifecycle.
- Creative in solving customer adoption challenges.
- Ability to proactively assist customers with technical issues and assist in troubleshooting and root cause analysis.
- A 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're 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.
Grafana Labs may utilize AI tools in its recruitment process to assist in matching information provided in CVs to job postings. The recruitment team will continue to review inbound CVs manually to identify alignment with current openings.
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To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/grafana-labs-associate-observability-architect-pst-remote