Staff AI Engineer - 2nd Horizon | UK | Remote

About the role

This position is part of a new initiative focused on bringing data analytics capabilities to a broader business audience using Grafana. You will contribute to building AI-powered features that help users understand and act on diverse datasets, aiming to make Grafana a central hub for enterprise data insights. In this role, you will own the design and implementation of intelligent components that bridge the gap between raw data and actionable business logic. You will be responsible for translating ambiguous product requirements into robust AI workflows that enhance how teams interact with time-series and operational data. Your work will directly influence how Grafana evolves from a monitoring dashboard into a proactive analytics assistant. You will partner closely with product managers and open-source contributors to validate hypotheses and iterate on AI features based on real user behavior. This is an opportunity to shape the future of analytics by applying cutting-edge generative AI techniques to a platform used by millions of engineers and analysts worldwide.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Architect and deploy AI-driven features that enable users to discover, organize, and optimize large volumes of data through natural language interactions.
• Prototype rapidly and conduct user testing to refine LLM and agent-based workflows, focusing on reliability in data engineering and analytics scenarios.
• Collaborate with cross-functional team members to define and integrate AI product features, including agent components and integrations with communication tools like Slack and alerting systems.
• Leverage AI and automation tools to enhance both external product capabilities and internal development workflows, reducing manual effort and increasing scalability.
• Take end-to-end ownership of AI solutions, ensuring they are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with evolving user needs and product strategy.
• Translate complex technical constraints and opportunities into clear implementation plans that balance innovation with operational stability.
• Contribute to open-source best practices and internal standards for AI development, ensuring that solutions are reproducible and well-documented.
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and architectural decisions that impact the long-term vision of the Grafana AI ecosystem.
• Experiment with emerging techniques in context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and fine-tuning to improve the accuracy and relevance of AI responses.
• Act as a technical advocate for AI-powered analytics, educating stakeholders on capabilities, limitations, and potential use cases.

Requirements

• Demonstrated experience with Large Language Models (LLMs), context engineering, and building applications powered by generative AI in production environments.
• A track record of delivering software that has been released to production and is actively used by end-users, with measurable impact on their workflows.
• Solid familiarity with cloud-native environments such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, including container orchestration and serverless patterns.
• Extensive experience using observability tools to monitor, debug, and troubleshoot complex system performance and AI behavior.
• A minimum of 2 years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong understanding of software design patterns and version control.
• Proven ability to write clean, testable, and maintainable code across multiple layers of the technology stack.
• Strong communication skills, enabling effective collaboration with distributed teams and stakeholders across different domains.
• Commitment to learning and adapting in a fast-paced environment where tools, frameworks, and requirements evolve frequently.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience building or working with agent frameworks or multi-agent systems that coordinate tasks across modular components.
• A background as a data analyst or direct experience with data platforms like Looker, Tableau, PowerBI, Snowflake, or Databricks.
• Prior experience developing tools specifically for data engineering workflows, including data transformation, scheduling, and pipeline monitoring.
• Contributions to open-source projects related to AI, analytics, or observability that demonstrate technical depth and collaboration skills.
• Understanding of data governance, security, and compliance considerations in enterprise analytics environments.

Practical notes

• Compensation range: £100,000 - £124,000 per year.
• Benefits include equity and bonus.
• This is a 100% remote position.
• Candidates considered for this role are located in Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, and the UK.
• Grafana Labs operates as a remote-first organization, emphasizing asynchronous communication and outcome-driven work.
• The role is part of the 2nd Horizon team, which focuses on exploring new product directions and emerging technologies that will shape the future of observability and analytics.

About the company

Grafana Labs is a remote-first, open-source powerhouse. There are more than 20M users of Grafana, the open source visualization tool, around the globe, monitoring everything from beehives to climate change in the Alps.