Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), AI Catalog: External Agents - GitLab

About the Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer on GitLab’s External Agents team, you will design and build integrations that bring GitLab agents into tools such as Slack and connect external solutions like Claude Code or Codex with GitLab. You will take end-to-end ownership of complex features, shape architectural patterns for AI functionality, and collaborate with engineers across the Agent Foundations stage.

What You’ll Do

• Develop, ship, and maintain secure, well-tested, and performant external agent integrations within the GitLab monolith.
• Collaborate with Product, UX, frontend, and AI specialists to refine requirements and deliver iterative improvements.
• Design, implement, and review GraphQL and REST APIs with clear contracts for frontend clients.
• Improve automated testing (RSpec) to strengthen quality and developer feedback loops.
• Share standards and patterns to support responsible AI integration across the team.
• Participate in Tier 2 on-call rotations, troubleshoot production issues, and improve system observability.
• Assess the competitive landscape to help GitLab build robust AI integrations as agentic technology evolves.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience building and maintaining production applications with Ruby on Rails (background jobs, APIs, data models).
• Comfort working across the stack in a mature codebase.
• Proficiency in designing/extending REST or GraphQL APIs with a focus on scalability and backward compatibility.
• Practical experience shipping AI-powered backend features or integrations.
• Strong SQL skills and familiarity with PostgreSQL (query optimization and data modeling).
• Experience identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks at the application and infrastructure layers.
• A collaborative mindset for an asynchronous, distributed team environment.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, financial, and well-being benefits.
• Flexible Paid Time Off.
• Equity compensation and Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
• Growth and Development Fund.
• Parental leave and Team Member Resource Groups.