Senior Backend Engineer

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.

The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, with all team members expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact. GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Our high-performance culture is driven by our values and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. Co-create the future with us as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.

*Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

An overview of this role

We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for GitLab's Portfolio Experience team. You'll be an experienced product engineer who incorporates user needs into feature decisions and brings full stack experience, with a current focus on backend. You'll spend as much time understanding user needs and shaping how features should work as you do building them, working directly with product, users, and open source contributors.

You'll help evolve the backend architecture that powers the work items platform, which must serve millions of work items in a single user's view across tens of thousands of groups and projects.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate with product and other engineers to shape requirements, understand user needs, and break complex projects into shippable iterations.
• Design and implement backend and real-time features in the GitLab monolith, including GraphQL and RESTful APIs and subscriptions, with a focus on performance, reliability, and user impact.
• Build and evolve portfolio planning capabilities, including work item hierarchy, status rollup, and capacity planning.
• Improve PostgreSQL performance at scale through query and write optimization, indexing, denormalization, partitioning, and moving suitable workloads to Elasticsearch or ClickHouse.
• Create proofs of concept for complex work, maintain extensive automated test coverage, and support safe rollouts with feature flags and strong observability.
• Mentor engineers and open source contributors through code reviews, pairing, regular feedback, contributor issues, and hackathons.
• Participate in on-call rotations, troubleshoot production issues, contribute to root cause analysis, and improve the team's development and review processes.

What you’ll bring

• Experience representing the user perspective while working through trade-offs with product managers, engineers, and users.
• Experience leading projects involving several engineers over multiple months and supporting others through thoughtful code reviews, feedback, hiring, career development, and mentoring.
• Full stack experience with a current backend focus, including proficiency with Ruby and Ruby on Rails and an understanding of how complex modern frontends work.
• Strong PostgreSQL skills and experience improving database performance at scale through query and write optimization, indexing, denormalization, and partitioning.
• Experience designing and evolving GraphQL and/or RESTful APIs with attention to scalability, backward compatibility, and clear contracts with frontend clients.
• Experience improving large automated test suites, including the performance and reliability of the tests themselves.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for an asynchronous, distributed environment.
• Experience integrating artificial intelligence into development workflows. Experience building artificial intelligence-powered features or working with Elasticsearch, ClickHouse, or Python is a plus.

We welcome candidates with different backgrounds and transferable skills. If you're excited about this role but don't meet every qualification, we encourage you to apply.

About the team

We are a team of 4 - 2x Backend Engineers, 2x Frontend Engineers located across Europe and Canada. We own the work item hierarchy, including Epic, Issue, and Task relationships, and top-down planning capabilities such as status rollup and capacity planning. We work async-first in two-week iterations, with retrospectives and a weekly sync.

The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. See more information on our benefits and equity. Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.

United States Salary Range

$139,200 - $235,200 USD

How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• Flexible Paid Time Off 
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental Leave 

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.