Grafana Labs
Manager, Foundation Observability Architects | USA | Remote
Job Summary
This role involves building and leading a team of Observability Architects focused on customer activation, adoption, and retention at scale within the Grafana Labs ecosystem. It requires managing technical customer relationships, designing scalable enablement programs, and collaborating with cross-functional teams such as Sales and Product. The ideal candidate brings strong technical expertise in observability tools, customer success experience, and leadership skills for mentoring high-performing teams. The position emphasizes proactive, data-driven customer engagement and operational excellence to support Grafana's global growth.
Required Skills
Benefits
Job Description
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. The instantly recognizable dashboards have been spotted everywhere from a NASA launch and Minecraft HQ to Wimbledon and the Tour de France. Grafana Labs also helps more than 3,000 companies -- including Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase, and eBay -- manage their observability strategies with the Grafana LGTM Stack, which can be run fully managed with Grafana Cloud or self-managed with the Grafana Enterprise Stack, both featuring scalable metrics (Grafana Mimir), logs (Grafana Loki), and traces (Grafana Tempo).
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:
We’re looking for the founding manager of our scaled Observability Architect team at Grafana Labs. As an OA leader, you will be at the vanguard of evolving our practice to meet the unique demands of our customers. This is an exciting opportunity to one of the first leaders of our Observability Architecture team–a technically elite team that will redefine what a Customer Solution Engineer is in our industry. This team is quickly becoming the envy of the Observability space. You will be responsible for all aspects of building and managing a team of high-performing Observability Architects. This team is our in-house, customer-facing solution experts.
This role’s focus is Grafana Labs’ Foundation, or scaled customer segment. The Foundation team differentiates itself from our high touch enterprise segments by driving activation, consumption, and retention at scale using programmatic, data-driven approaches. Each Observability Architect impacts a high number of customers. Your team will blend proactive outreach, one-to-many enablement programs, lightweight reactive assistance, and automated workflows to help a broad customer base quickly realize value from Grafana without requiring bespoke, hands-on engagements.
The Observability Architect is a deep technical and customer lifecycle specialist who, with the help of account teams, owns the platform onboarding, adoption and expansion experience for Grafana's customers. They are responsible for the rapid and successful application of our technology. The OA team enables Grafana Labs’s worldwide growth by educating existing customers to ensure they are happy, successful and realizing genuine value. They share their technical and product expertise with customers through demos, hands-on enablement, presentations, design guidance, technical evaluations and ongoing interaction. They partner closely with our Sales team to identify new problems to solve for our customers. The OAs are our customers’ primary technical contact as well as the voice of our customers to the Product Management and Engineering teams.
What You'll Be Doing:
Build & Lead a High-Performing Team
- Recruit, ramp, mentor, and manage the performance of deeply technical Observability Architects from diverse backgrounds.
- Serve as a player/coach—balancing strategic leadership with hands-on support.
- Own retention and expansion.
- Bring out the best in your team.
Programs That Scale Activation & Usage
- Design one-to-many onboarding programs, enablement campaigns, usage webinars, and in-app nudges, triggered by real-time consumption or sentiment data.
- Work with the team to enhance documentation, write blog posts, record videos, contribute knowledge base articles, and create other public and internal enablement material
- Define, refine and execute lifecycle frameworks—from onboarding to expansion to renewal.
Data‑Driven & Technical Action Triggers
- Monitor consumption, health, and sentiment signals to proactively intervene with automation or human touch.
- Own escalations, technical troubleshooting, and customer outreach for stalled or at-risk accounts.
Customer Advocacy & Escalation Management
- Act as the voice of the customer to Product, Engineering, and GTM teams, ensuring feedback loops are well structured.
- Drive executive sponsorship and periodic technical reviews with key accounts.
Cross-functional Alignment
- Work closely with Sales, Support, CS Ops, Professional Services, and Product to deliver scalable and consistent customer outcomes.
- Partner with Sales leadership on customer programs, marketing initiatives and community/company events to drive adoption and expansion.
What Makes You a Great Fit:
- 5+ years in Technical Account Management, Customer Success, SE/product consulting, or Professional Services with tech/B2B SaaS; 2+ years people management.
- Demonstrated success building low-touch/use triggered programs in SaaS at scale.
- Deep observability expertise—Grafana stack experience is a plus.
- Strong analytical fluency: Salesforce, Gainsight (or equivalent CS platforms), data visualization tools (Looker, Tableau), usage telemetry.
- Excellent written, presentation, and stakeholder alignment skills across technical and executive levels.
Bonus Points For:
- Data‑Obsessed & Programmatic: You love KPIs, dashboards, and building scalable low-touch motions grounded in usage trends.
- Technically Fluent & Consultative: Comfortable discussing observability architecture, Kubernetes, telemetry stacks (Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, Tempo), APIs, and integrations.
- Leader of Technical Talent: Skilled mentor and coach, elevating your team’s technical craftsmanship and scaled operational excellence.
- Operational Driver with a Bias for Action: Expert in defining triggers, running experiments, iterating on programs, and continuously improving customer outcomes.
- You love solving technical challenges and thrive on bringing creative solutions to our customers
In the US, the OTE range for this role is $237,000 - $278,000. 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: We will recruit, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, disability, age, veteran status, and all 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.
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.
#LI-Remote
Grafana Labs
Grafana is the open source analytics & monitoring solution for every database.
See more jobsSafe Remote Job Search Tips
Verify Employer Thoroughly
Research the company's identity thoroughly before applying. Check for a professional website with contacts, active social media, and LinkedIn profiles. Verify details across platforms and look for reviews on Glassdoor or Trustpilot to confirm legitimacy.
Never Pay to Get a Job
Legitimate employers never require payment for applications, training, background checks, or equipment. Always reject upfront payment requests or demands for bank details, even if they claim it's for purchasing necessary work gear on your behalf.
Safeguard Your Personal Information
Protect sensitive data like SSN, bank details, or ID copies. Share this only after accepting a formal, written job offer. Ensure it's submitted via a secure company system or portal, never through insecure channels like standard email attachments.
Scrutinize Communication & Interviews
Watch for communication red flags: poor grammar, generic emails (@gmail), vague details, or undue pressure. Be highly suspicious of interviews held only via text or chat apps; legitimate companies typically use video or phone calls.
Beware of Unrealistic Offers
If an offer's salary or benefits seem unrealistically high for the work involved, be cautious. Research standard pay for similar roles. Offers that appear 'too good to be true' are often scams designed to lure you into providing information or payment.
Insist on a Formal Contract
Always secure and review a formal, written job offer or employment contract before starting work or sharing final personal details. Ensure it clearly defines your role, compensation, key terms, and conditions to avoid misunderstandings or scams.