Grafana Labs

Open-Source Observability Platform — Metrics, Logs, and Traces for Every Engineer

The consensus on Grafana Labs: Choose Grafana Labs if you want deep open-source impact, fully remote flexibility, and excellent WLB — but expect limited career progression paths above staff level.

2014
Founded
New York
HQ (Fully Remote)
~1,700
Employees
$6B
Valuation (2024)
Culture Overview

What it's really like to work at Grafana Labs

Founded in 2014 by Raj Dutt and Torkel Ödegaard, Grafana Labs is the company behind Grafana, Loki, Tempo, and Mimir — the open-source observability stack used by millions of engineers worldwide. As a 100% remote company with no physical offices, Grafana Labs has teams across 40+ countries operating async-first. The culture is deeply engineering-driven with strong open-source values — engineers contribute to projects with millions of community users. Expect generous PTO (~30 days), mandatory shutdown days, and a collaborative environment where talented engineers work on tools that define modern observability.

Open Source Remote-First Engineering-Driven Transparent Work-Life Balance Learning & Growth
Glassdoor Ratings

Grafana Labs Glassdoor Ratings & Employee Reviews

4.1
Overall Glassdoor Score
Based on 205 reviews
Culture & Values 4.1
Compensation & Benefits 4.0
Senior Management 3.6
Career Opportunities 3.8
Work-Life Balance 4.3
Overall Rating 4.1
78% Recommend to a Friend
71% CEO Approval (Raj Dutt)
Employee Review Themes

Working at Grafana Labs: Pros & Cons

✓ What employees love

  • ✓ 100% remote-first across 40+ countries with generous PTO (~30 days) and mandatory shutdown days
  • ✓ Engineers rate it 4.9/5 on Glassdoor — absurdly talented colleagues with strong collaborative culture
  • ✓ Open-source at its core — contribute to projects used by millions of engineers worldwide
  • ✓ Transparent leadership that genuinely cares about people, with strong camaraderie and fun culture
  • ✓ $400M+ ARR with 7,000+ customers — stable, well-funded, and growing rapidly

✗ What could be better

  • ✗ Career progression above staff level can be very challenging
  • ✗ Product management is sometimes marginalized, with engineers holding disproportionate power
  • ✗ Some management lacks experience to lead effectively in certain areas
  • ✗ Compensation could be more competitive at senior levels compared to FAANG
Engineering Culture

How the engineering team works

Tech Stack

Go TypeScript React Kubernetes Prometheus Grafana Loki

Open Source

All core products are open-source — Grafana (60k+ GitHub stars), Loki, Tempo, Mimir. Active community with contributors from around the world.

Engineering Blog

Active blog on observability, distributed systems, and open-source development. Read the blog →

Team Structure

Fully remote with small autonomous teams. Engineers own features end-to-end across the observability stack.

Open Positions

Join the Grafana Labs team

... open positions.

Community Sentiment

What the community says about Grafana Labs

Mixed Sentiment 10 mentions from Hacker News & Reddit · Updated 2026-03-19
“A reply of sorts, and a standard disclaimer that I work at Grafana Labs.> career-driven developmentwe don't have this and promote and reward as frequently for "I've done solid...”
Hacker News buro9 · 2025-11-18 View thread →
“Building AI coding tools, there are two common options.The AI suggests code and you run it. Or the AI runs code on your actual machine.”
Hacker News intheleantime · 2026-02-27 View thread →
“> Mimir in version 3.0 needs Apache Kafka to work.I’d like to adjust this understanding. Kafka is the big new thing, but it’s optional. The previous way using gRPC still works.”
Hacker News bboreham · 2025-11-15 View thread →
“Grafana Labs | Remote-first (and-only) | Senior / Staff Software Engineer | Full-timeI am looking for someone with a lot of experience with SaaS platforms at scale.”
Hacker News arturw8i · 2025-08-01 View thread →
“Hey everyone I am thinking about applying to Grafana Labs for a software engineering role and wanted to get a better sense of the company culture.”
Reddit r/cscareerquestionsEU · 7 upvotes · 2026-03-02 View thread →
“**S+ tier (basically mythic status)** * Renaissance Technologies — Medallion Fund * NSA, pure research side * OpenAI (core research / superalignment types) * SpaceX (Starship + propulsion...”
Reddit r/csMajors · 0 upvotes · 2025-12-13 View thread →
“Hi everyone, I was recently approached by a Google HR for a SRE position in Google India (Google Cloud to be precise). I have 2.5years of experience in building backend systems for a bank.”
Reddit r/leetcode · 1 upvotes · 2026-02-07 View thread →

Sentiment data refreshed daily from public Hacker News and Reddit discussions. See all company profiles →

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