Staff Backend Engineer, Core DevOps
GitLab · Remote · Canada +1 · 6d ago
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
As a Staff Backend Engineer on GitLab's Core DevOps team, you'll provide technical leadership across your team and adjacent teams. You'll lead large backend initiatives, guide the modernization of a large monolith into modular, reusable, appropriately independent systems, and set standards that help teams move faster without compromising quality, security, reliability, or operability.
You'll work with Product, Frontend, Infrastructure, Security, Data, Engineering Managers, and engineers across product groups. You'll lead complex backend architecture, make product trade-offs, and influence technical direction without formal authority.
GitLab is an open core software company that develops an artificial intelligence-powered DevSecOps platform. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. We work in an all-remote, asynchronous environment where you communicate decisions clearly in writing and work independently.
What you’ll do
- Lead the technical design and delivery of backend initiatives that span teams, and identify and remove systemic bottlenecks across product and infrastructure groups.
- Drive modular backend, service, data, and platform architecture, including modernization of the monolith and legacy backends while preventing fragmentation and service sprawl.
- Define and improve standards for application programming interfaces, contracts, compatibility, schema evolution, testing, security, performance, observability, operability, and maintainability.
- Establish patterns for dependency management, data ownership, eventing, failure isolation, service maturity, and operational documentation.
- Establish Go service patterns and Kubernetes operating practices where they matter to the production estate, and guide Rust adoption where it addresses systems, security, performance, or supply-chain needs.
- Take part in on-call and incident response for systems your teams own, serve as a technical escalation point during complex incidents, and turn lessons from incidents into lasting improvements.
- Partner with Product and Engineering leadership on platform roadmap decisions and investment trade-offs.
- Mentor Senior and Intermediate engineers, reduce technical debt, build reusable patterns that improve team throughput, and lead adoption of artificial intelligence-assisted and agentic workflows with quality, security, privacy, and operational guardrails.
What you’ll bring
- A record of leading technical work across more than one team or a broad product area.
- Deep backend architecture and production experience with complex applications, services, or platforms, including application programming interfaces, service platforms, data systems, modular monoliths, or shared backend components.
- Experience modernizing a monolith or legacy backend architecture in production and using modular approaches such as bounded contexts, package encapsulation, ports and adapters, service extraction, or event-driven boundaries.
- Experience building alignment through clear written proposals and decision records so teams document, understand, and adopt technical decisions.
- Experience making trade-offs among customer outcomes, delivery speed, technical health, reliability, and long-term platform investment.
- Experience mentoring engineers and shaping standards through code review, documentation, and practice.
- Production experience with artificial intelligence-assisted or agentic engineering workflows, including improving how a team adopts them.
About the team
The Core DevOps team owns core repository capabilities, from Git command-line operations to web-based code exploration. We build features and platforms, improve existing capabilities, and improve maintainability, accessibility, performance, and workflows for teams using artificial intelligence-assisted development tools.
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.
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.