Staff Backend Engineer, Developer Experience - GitLab

About the Role

As a Staff Backend Engineer in the Developer Experience group, you will work cross-functionally to identify and remove friction across GitLab’s internal engineering teams. You will play a pivotal role in transforming our testing approach and development experience to enable engineers to deliver high-quality code efficiently.

This role involves splitting your time between hands-on coding in Ruby and Go, designing scalable solutions, and providing technical leadership across six globally distributed teams.

Key Projects

• Identifying and removing flakiness in test pipelines.
• Introducing comprehensive test coverage reporting.
• Standardizing logging libraries and documentation.
• Providing stable, configurable development environments.

What You’ll Do

• Drive Technical Excellence: Provide hands-on contributions and leadership to unblock critical work and accelerate high-impact initiatives.
• Champion Engineering Needs: Partner with teams to identify pain points and translate frustrations into actionable roadmap improvements.
• Transform Testing: Modernize testing infrastructure to support growth while maintaining speed and reliability.
• Optimize CI/CD: Build workflows that deliver fast, actionable feedback to help engineers iterate confidently.
• Break Down Bottlenecks: Collaborate with Platform, Product, and Infrastructure teams to eliminate architectural and process friction.
• Shape Culture: Foster a culture of continuous learning, inclusion, and improvement.

What You’ll Bring

• Deep experience with developer tooling, DevEx strategies, and testing frameworks at scale.
• Experience leading platform or transformation initiatives across multiple teams.
• Proven ability to influence without authority and collaborate across functions.
• Familiarity with DevOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in a remote-first environment.
• A product mindset with a passion for empowering developers.
• Alignment with GitLab values: collaboration, iteration, and transparency.