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:
As our EMEA Events Manager, you'll independently own and deliver Grafana's regional events across EMEA and, over time, APJ, from our ObservabilityCON on the Road conferences to our third-party sponsorship portfolio. This is a hands-on role for an experienced event manager who has run their own conferences end-to-end: sourced and contracted the venue, managed the budget, managed the vendors, and been on-site when something goes wrong. You'll work across marketing, sales, product, and regional teams, and you'll own the outcome of your events, not just their execution. We move fast, we expect high standards, and we're building an AI-first marketing team, so curiosity about new tools and rigor about their output both matter here.
What You’ll Be Doing:
- Independently manage and execute a portfolio of in-person events, including owned regional user conferences and third-party sponsorships, across EMEA and eventually APJ
- Lead end-to-end event logistics, including venue sourcing, negotiating, and contracting, vendor coordination, booth design and setup, and on-site execution.
- Own event project management, maintaining detailed timelines, budgets, contracts, and vendor communications while ensuring alignment and visibility across stakeholders.
- Define and track event success metrics; deliver post-event analysis and translate insights into actionable improvements that increase performance and ROI.
- Create, review, and approve event assets such as signage, collateral, presentations, and registration experiences to ensure brand consistency and high-quality execution.
- Leverage and build AI and automation tools to improve planning efficiency, execution accuracy, and reporting processes.
- Identify risks early and resolve issues proactively, leading real-time problem-solving and on-site decision-making.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with marketing, sales, product, and regional teams to align event strategy with broader business objectives.
- Provide guidance to junior team members, contractors, and agency partners while remaining hands-on in execution.
What Makes You a Great Fit:
- Located in the UK, Netherlands, Sweden, or Germany
- 4+ years of direct event management experience, including hosted conferences you personally owned end to end and third-party conference sponsorships you ran independently.
- Demonstrated ownership of the full event lifecycle: venue sourcing, negotiating, and contracting, budget ownership and reconciliation, vendor management, registration build, on-site delivery as the lead, and post-event analysis.
- Experience as the primary on-site lead for in-person events, making real-time decisions on vendors, staffing, run of show, and unforeseen problems without escalation.
- Willingness to travel by plane, approximately 40 percent. This includes long-haul travel to APJ and occasional work across APJ/AMER time zones, and flexibility during peak event seasons, when travel may be frequent and involve back-to-back trips over extended periods.
- Curiosity and adaptability in adopting new marketing technologies, including AI-driven tools such as Claude Code
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with demonstrated ability to collaborate across global, cross-functional teams.
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.
- Proven ability to manage multiple concurrent events with competing deadlines and shifting priorities while maintaining quality.
- Proven track record of managing complex, multi-stakeholder events with exceptional attention to detail and follow-through.
- Strong organizational and time management skills, with the ability to anticipate needs and identify gaps.
- Demonstrated problem-solving and sound decision-making skills in fast-paced, ambiguous situations.
- Proficiency in Zuddl or similar registration platforms and familiarity with Salesforce and Monday.com preferred.
What Success Looks Like in This Role:
- Deep event management craft, including the judgment that comes from having run events that didn't go to plan.
- A positive, solutions-oriented mindset in high-pressure situations.
- Exceptional attention to detail and commitment to quality.
- Intellectual curiosity and a drive for continuous improvement.
- Initiative, ownership, and accountability for outcomes.
- Strong analytical and project management capabilities.
- Ability to assess results and recommend data-driven improvements.
- Comfort working across different business cultures, regions, and time zones.
- Strong stakeholder communication, with the ability to bring cross-functional partners along from early planning through execution.
- Sound budget and commercial judgment, including negotiating with vendors and knowing where to invest versus where to pull back.
- Flexibility and resilience in an evolving environment with competing priorities.
- A service-oriented approach and the ability to build strong, collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
- Practical experience applying AI tools to enhance research, analysis, and operational efficiency while maintaining rigorous quality control.
Compensation & Rewards:
In the UK the OTE (On-Target Earnings) compensation range for this role is GBP 79,000 - GBP 95,000. 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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