Tempo Distributed Tracing
Tempo is Grafana's open-source distributed tracing system. It stores and queries traces from microservices to identify performance bottlenecks and failures. Used by DevOps and SRE teams managing complex systems. Salary band: 110–170k USD. Time to learn: 4–6 weeks. Adjacent to observability, Prometheus, and Kubernetes. Lower learning curve than traditional tracing (Jaeger).
What is Tempo Distributed Tracing
Grafana Tempo is an open-source, cost-efficient distributed tracing backend designed for large-scale microservices environments. It ingests traces from applications, stores them in object storage (S3, GCS, Azure Blob), and provides a fast query interface integrated with Grafana. Unlike traditional APM solutions with expensive per-span pricing, Tempo charges only for storage, making it economical for high-volume tracing. Tempo is part of the Grafana Observability Stack (Prometheus for metrics, Loki for logs, Tempo for traces). Together, they provide comprehensive visibility into distributed systems without vendor lock-in.
📋 Before you start
💰 Salary by region
| Region | Junior | Mid | Senior |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA | $85k | $135k | $180k |
| UK | $48k | $80k | $115k |
| EU | $52k | $85k | $120k |
| CANADA | $80k | $125k | $170k |
🎓 Certifications
🎯 Careers using Tempo Distributed Tracing
❓ FAQ
Why use Tempo instead of Jaeger?
What's a trace and why do I need it?
How does trace sampling work?
Can I integrate Tempo with my existing Prometheus setup?
What's OpenTelemetry and how does it relate to Tempo?
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