Director of Engineering, Loki Databases | Canada | Remote

Grafana Labs Grafana Labs · Data AI · Canada, United States · Remote · R&D : Databases

Director of Engineering for Loki Databases at Grafana Labs, focusing on leading a team of 20+ engineers to develop and scale the Loki logs database service. The role involves people management, product vision, and technical guidance for a distributed systems product, with an emphasis on using AI-assisted tooling.

What you'd actually do

  1. Leading a team of 20+ engineers and growing them over time, including managing managers, developing a team of engineers, providing regular feedback and supporting each person’s growth through career conversations.
  2. Collaborate closely with product, design and engineering leadership to define goals that move the Logs group forward and align with broader business objectives. Drive the product vision from listening to customer feedback and anticipating market trends.
  3. Provide guidance throughout the project lifecycle from early ideation through planning, execution and post‑launch guiding the team to deliver high‑quality outcomes consistently.
  4. Foster a psychologically safe environment where engineers can learn, experiment and iterate quickly, encouraging innovation and a culture of continuous improvement.
  5. Work across team boundaries by contributing to projects outside your team’s scope and partnering with other functions to solve customer problems.

Skills

Required

  • Director level engineering people management
  • Distributed systems principles (scalability, fault tolerance, consistency, observability)
  • Customer focus
  • Collaboration across time zones and cultures
  • Communication
  • Mentorship and guidance of engineers
  • Project lifecycle management
  • Stakeholder alignment
  • AI-assisted tooling usage

Nice to have

  • Entrepreneurial vision
  • Bias toward action and ownership
  • Navigating ambiguity
  • Driving work in complex problem spaces
  • Building trust, connection, and psychological safety

What the JD emphasized

  • Director level engineering people manager
  • entrepreneurial vision
  • strong bias toward action and ownership
  • navigate ambiguity
  • drive work forward in complex problem spaces
  • Comfortable collaborating across time zones and cultures in a fully remote environment
  • using clear, empathetic communication to build trust, connection, and psychological safety
  • guiding and supporting other engineers
  • leading initiatives or small teams
  • collaborating effectively to drive projects to successful outcomes
  • manage complexity
  • align stakeholders
  • elevate team performance
  • deliver meaningful, high-quality results
  • Deeply customer-focused
  • grounding decisions and technical choices in user needs and real-world impact
  • Solid understanding of distributed systems principles, including scalability, fault tolerance, consistency, and observability
  • Comfort with AI-assisted tooling
  • practical experience folding them into a team’s workflow