Senior Backend Engineer, Architecture Engineering: Nonlinear Productivity - GitLab

About the Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer on GitLab's Nonlinear Productivity (NLP) team, you will identify and remove friction across the software development lifecycle using reliable, AI-powered automation. This is a strategic incubation group operating like a startup, reporting directly to AI Platform leadership.

What You'll Do

• Identify & Scope: Find sources of friction in the SDLC and turn vague pain points into concrete, buildable proposals for agentic solutions.
• Build Reliable Systems: Design AI-powered systems that use tools, safety checks, and error correction to perform real engineering tasks.
• Evaluate Performance: Build and maintain tools to judge agent output on correctness, constraint compliance, and cost.
• Cross-Functional Impact: Work across the entire GitLab codebase to address friction wherever it exists.
• Distributed Systems Engineering: Apply rigorous judgment to ensure generated code handles concurrency, scale, and various deployment models (self-managed, dedicated, multi-tenant).
• Collaborate: Partner with our India-based group to share roadmaps, findings, and reusable agent tooling.

What You'll Bring

• Agentic Experience: Hands-on experience building production-grade LLM systems (multi-step orchestration, tool use, guardrails, and recovery patterns).
• Autonomy: A track record of navigating unfamiliar codebases and driving solutions to completion.
• Systems Knowledge: Strong understanding of distributed systems, including coordination, idempotency, rate limiting, and failure modes.
• Technical Proficiency: Proficiency in Go, Rust, or Python, with the ability to read and modify code in the others.
• Bonus Points: Experience shipping autonomous agents, improving build/release systems, or working with globally distributed teams and complex production constraints.

Why Join Us?

• Operate in a greenfield environment with high ownership.
• Help shape internal fixes into customer-facing capabilities.
• Work in a high-performance culture that embraces AI as a core productivity multiplier.

Benefits

• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Comprehensive health, financial, and well-being benefits
• Parental Leave