At Grafana Labs, a UX/UI Designer does not just design interfaces; they shape how the world visualizes and understands complex systems data. Grafana Labs is the powerhouse behind widely used open-source observability tools like Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus. As a designer in this space, you will tackle some of the most complex, data-dense, and highly technical design challenges in the software industry.

Your work will directly impact millions of developers, DevOps engineers, and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) who rely on Grafana to monitor their infrastructure, diagnose critical system outages, and build real-time dashboards. The role requires a unique blend of deep analytical thinking, systems design, and visual clarity to transform massive datasets, complex query structures, and multi-layered workflows into intuitive, elegant user experiences.

Designing for a highly technical user base means you must embrace complexity rather than shy away from it. You will be expected to understand developer workflows, anticipate technical constraints, and advocate for user-centric design principles in a highly collaborative, engineering-driven culture. This role offers the rare opportunity to influence the open-source community while defining the visual and interactive future of enterprise observability.

To succeed in the Grafana Labs interview process, you must be prepared for questions that test your end-to-end design methodology, your technical understanding, and your ability to collaborate with engineering partners. The following questions are compiled from real interview experiences of candidates who have gone through the loop for the UX/UI Designer position.

Portfolio & Case Studies

These questions evaluate your ability to articulate your design process, manage project constraints, and measure the success of your work.

• Walk us through the most complex design project you have worked on. What made it complex, and how did you navigate those challenges?
• Can you describe a time when you had to make a significant trade-off between design aesthetics and technical feasibility?

Preparing for an interview at Grafana Labs requires a strategic focus on how you communicate your design choices. Because you will be working on highly technical products, your interviewers will look for structured thinking and a deep understanding of user behavior.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a strong grasp of data visualization principles, information architecture, and design system scalability. Showing familiarity with developer tools or complex B2B SaaS applications will heavily work in your favor.

Systems Thinking – You should be able to explain how individual UI components fit into the broader product ecosystem. Interviewers want to see that you do not just design isolated screens, but rather cohesive user flows that scale across different screen sizes and data densities.

Collaborative Communication – At Grafana Labs, design is a team sport. You will be evaluated on how clearly you articulate your design rationale to non-designers, how you incorporate feedback, and how you build alignment across product and engineering teams.

The interview process at Grafana Labs is designed to be a comprehensive, two-way conversation. Candidates frequently praise the process for being incredibly warm, professional, and deeply reflective of the company's collaborative culture. It is structured to evaluate your technical design skills, your problem-solving capabilities, and your cultural alignment through real-world scenarios.

The process is fully remote and conducted via Zoom. It moves quickly, with recruiters maintaining transparent and prompt communication. The journey begins with an initial screening and progresses through technical portfolio reviews and verbal design challenges, ensuring both you and the hiring team have ample opportunity to evaluate the mutual fit.

`

`

This timeline outlines the typical stages of the UX/UI Designer hiring loop. It shows the progression from the initial recruiter screen to the collaborative portfolio review, followed by verbal design challenges and peer 1:1 sessions. Use this visual guide to pace your preparation and focus on the specific expectations of each milestone.

To stand out in the Grafana Labs hiring loop, you must understand exactly what your interviewers are looking for during each stage of the technical assessment.

Complex Project Presentation (Portfolio Review)

This is a critical 1-hour session, typically conducted with a Principal Designer and a Product Director. You will have approximately 20 minutes to present the most complex design project you have ever worked on, followed by an in-depth Q&A session.

Be ready to go over:

• The Problem Space – Clearly define the user problem, the business goals, and why this project was highly complex.
• Your Design Process – Detail your research, your iterations, and the specific design frameworks you utilized.
• The Visual and Interactive Solution – Show high-fidelity designs and explain the rationale behind your layout, typography, and interactive choices.
• Advanced concepts – Be prepared to discuss how you designed for technical personas, how you handled massive datasets, and how you ensured accessibility (a11y) within complex charts and tables.

Example scenarios:

• "Walk us through how you simplified a highly convoluted user workflow without losing the depth of functionality required by power users."
• "Explain how you collaborated with engineering to implement a custom data visualization component under tight timeline constraints."

Verbal Design Challenges

This 1-hour interview is led by a Design Manager and a Senior Developer. Instead of drawing on a digital whiteboard, you will engage in a verbal dialogue to solve 3 to 4 specific design challenges. This format tests your spontaneous critical thinking and your ability to collaborate in real-time.

Be ready to go over:

• Structured Frameworks – Use a clear methodology (such as the Double Diamond or jobs-to-be-done) to break down the hypothetical problem before proposing solutions.
• Edge-Case Management – Discuss how your proposed design would handle errors, slow loading states, or empty data views.
• Developer Collaboration – Actively involve the Senior Developer in the conversation by asking about technical constraints and implementation trade-offs.
• Advanced concepts – Scaling design components, balancing custom UI patterns with established design systems, and optimizing visual hierarchy for high-density dashboards.

Example scenarios:

• "How would you design a system that alerts engineers to anomalies in their data without causing alert fatigue?"
• "Describe your approach to designing a customizable dashboard layout engine that allows users to drag, drop, and resize different visualization panels."