Staff Backend Engineer, Developer Experience

GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating the rate of human progress. This mission is integral to our culture, influencing how we hire, build products, and lead our industry. We make this possible at GitLab by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values. Learn more about Life at GitLab.

Thanks to products like Duo Enterprise, and Duo Workflow, customers get the benefit of AI at every stage of the SDLC. The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier. All team members are encouraged and expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact across our global organisation.

About the role

As a Staff Engineer in GitLab's Developer Experience organization, you'll help drive engineering excellence at GitLab by creating tools that measure, analyze, and optimize development workflows and lead initiatives that enhance developer productivity.

What you'll do

• Contribute to the overall direction of the Developer Experience stage and Engineering-wide developer productivity initiatives through cross-team collaboration and technical leadership.
• Teach, mentor and grow engineers across teams while providing technical guidance aligned with strategic objectives
• Plan and execute improvements with a 12-month roadmap that supports stage-level OKRs
• Solve complex, ambiguous technical problems across teams, innovating through experimentation and boldly tackling large-scale challenges.
• Partner with the Management team, and enable Staff Engineers to engage on stage-level aspects of larger initiatives.
• Propose technical implementations that support architectural changes that solve scaling and performance problems.
• Interact with customers and other external stakeholders as a consultant and spokesperson for the work of your stage.
• Represent GitLab and its values in public communication around broader initiatives, specific projects, and community contributions.
• Ship features and improvements independently with minimal guidance while mentoring other team members

Examples of initiatives you will work on

• Provide architectural leadership for improving merge request cycle time, CI/CD infrastructure, and development environments
• Drive technical solutions for code quality, performance optimization, and test framework enhancements
• Implement metrics and instrumentation to guide data-driven feature development
• Align stage level technical direction within Developer Experience and also across DevSecOps lifecycle stages

What you'll bring

• Strong proficiency in developing in Ruby or Golang (Ruby preferred)
• Strong experience working on public cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and managed compute platform (e.g, Google Cloud Run)
• Strong understanding of Infrastructure as Code & configuration management (Terraform & Ansible)
• Track record building developer tools that improve velocity, quality, and code health
• Experience with comprehensive testing approaches and product launches
• Strong experience with software design and architecture.
• Technical leadership experience setting direction and guiding project teams
• Background in engineering productivity, developer tooling, and test automation
• Experience managing data and building visualization with analytics platforms (e.g, Snowflake)

About the team:

Our mission is to empower developers by building tools that enhance engineering effectiveness, enabling GitLab to deliver high quality products faster to customers. Read more about the stage in our handbook.

How GitLab will support you

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• All remote, asynchronous work environment
• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental leave
• Home office support

Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.

Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.

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GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.