Intermediate Backend Engineer - GitLab

About GitLab

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

We embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, expecting all team members to incorporate AI into their daily workflows for efficiency, innovation, and impact. GitLab fosters a high-performance culture driven by values and continuous knowledge exchange, where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued.

About the Role: Intermediate Backend Engineer

As an Intermediate Backend Engineer, you will own backend features and improvements from problem clarification through shipping and production follow-up. You will work within a product area, collaborating with Product Management, Frontend, Infrastructure, and Security to deliver predictably and contribute to the quality, security, performance, and maintainability of shared backend code and services. You will operate with minimal guidance, knowing when to seek help, and communicate clearly in a remote, asynchronous environment, supported by tenured engineers for reviews and problem-solving.

Why You'll Love This Role

• Ownership: Take features from requirements through delivery and follow-up, impacting millions of users.
• Learning and Growth: Engage in code and design reviews as a learning loop to accelerate your engineering judgment.
• Innovative Culture: Utilize AI as a genuine part of daily engineering work, developing judgment on its application.
• Autonomy: Thrive in a remote-first, asynchronous organization built on clear written communication and self-direction.
• User-Centric Collaboration: Partner closely with PMs and designers to shape requirements and understand the 'why' behind your work.

What You'll Do

• Own and Ship Features: Design, implement, test, and ship backend features and improvements with minimal guidance, using Ruby/Rails, Go, or other modern languages.
• Build for Production: Write maintainable, secure, observable, and performant code. Design and maintain APIs, background jobs, integrations, bounded service functionality, data models, migrations, indexes, and query behavior.
• Test and Review: Add and improve automated coverage (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end) and review others’ code for correctness, maintainability, security, performance, and operational risk.
• Operate What You Build: Investigate build, test, deployment, and runtime failures, identify technical debt, propose improvements, and participate in on-call or operational support as required.
• Leverage AI: Productively use AI coding tools in daily work, validate their output, and understand their limitations.

What You'll Bring

• Backend Fundamentals: Professional experience building and shipping production backend applications, with strong programming, API, database, testing, debugging, and performance fundamentals.
• Adaptability: Experience with Ruby/Rails, Go, or any other modern backend language. We value the ability to learn and adapt over mastery of a single language.
• Feature Ownership: Ability to take a feature from clarification through delivery and follow-up, working independently while seeking input at the right time.
• Practical Judgment: Sound instincts regarding security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and operational risk, plus an understanding of modular backend boundaries and coupling consequences.
• Clear Communication: Strong written communication and effective collaboration in a remote, asynchronous environment.
• AI Fluency: Practical experience with AI coding tools, including the ability to review and correct generated code.

Helpful Experience

• Production Go services, APIs, concurrency, profiling, or gRPC.
• Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, CI/CD, or cloud deployment.
• Rust, particularly for systems, security, performance, or platform work.
• PostgreSQL, schema evolution, caching, queues, messaging, or event-driven workflows.
• Observability using metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerts.
• Contributing to a modular monolith, bounded context, shared component, or independently operated service.

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

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