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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.
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We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our Source Code Experience team within GitLab's Create stage. You'll help make everyday source code workflows clear, reliable, and efficient for people working across GitLab projects. As artificial intelligence agents increasingly write and manage code alongside people, you'll build backend capabilities and interfaces that support trustworthy collaboration between people and agents.
You'll work in one of GitLab's oldest and most complex product areas, using Ruby and GraphQL to improve critical source code experiences across GitLab.com, self-managed instances, and GitLab Dedicated. The Source Code group is responsible for the backend and frontend aspects of the product categories within Source Code. You'll help maintain high reliability through performance and structured query language tuning, caching, rate limiting, testing, observability, and resiliency. You'll collaborate with product management, product design, testing, security, user experience research, technical writing, Gitaly, Code Review, and other Source Code teams to deliver reliable and performant systems.
Learn more about the Create:Source Code teams in the GitLab Handbook.
What you’ll do- Develop secure, well-tested, performant features and improvements using Ruby and GraphQL.
- Turn complex requirements and legacy constraints into clear solutions without compromising the reliability of this critical system.
- Design and maintain backend services, application programming interfaces, data models, and business logic that support intuitive source code workflows.
- Collaborate across functions and teams, both asynchronously and synchronously, involving domain experts when their input will improve the outcome.
- Use artificial intelligence agents for well-scoped work when they can speed up delivery without sacrificing quality, and critically review their output.
- Write maintainable code that follows GitLab's standards and advocate for those standards through code review.
- Strengthen reliability by monitoring production health metrics, participating in Tier 2 on-call, troubleshooting incidents, performing root cause analysis, and improving observability and resiliency.
- Share knowledge through code review, technical documentation, and everyday collaboration while learning from others.
- Professional experience building backend web applications, services, or application programming interfaces using Ruby and GraphQL.
- A solid understanding of relational databases, structured query language, data modeling, caching, background processing, and backend performance best practices.
- Experience improving complex, user-facing workflows and making their underlying systems reliable and maintainable.
- Experience writing backend unit, integration, and acceptance tests, with familiarity with the testing pyramid, Git, and collaborative code review processes.
- Experience using artificial intelligence coding agents to scope tasks, review output, and assess their limitations in a complex monorepo.
- Clear written and spoken English communication skills, including the ability to influence without authority and share useful status updates in a remote, asynchronous environment.
- The ability to manage priorities independently, work through ambiguity, take ownership, and seek guidance for decisions that are difficult to reverse.
The Source Code Experience team works within GitLab's Source Code group, which owns the backend and frontend aspects of the product categories that support source code workflows. The team focuses on making core source code experiences clear, consistent, and dependable while maintaining the availability, reliability, and performance expected from a critical part of GitLab. You'll work closely with Code Review, Gitaly, and other Source Code teams to improve how people and artificial intelligence agents interact with repositories and source code across GitLab.
We welcome candidates with different levels and types of experience. Many successful candidates don't meet every requirement. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiting team to assess your application.
- 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.
Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.
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.
Skills Required
- Professional experience building backend web applications, services, or APIs using Ruby and GraphQL.
- Solid understanding of relational databases and Structured Query Language (SQL).
- Experience with data modeling, caching, background processing, and backend performance best practices.
- Experience improving complex, user-facing workflows and maintaining reliable systems.
- Experience writing backend unit, integration, and acceptance tests; familiarity with testing pyramid and Git.
- Experience using artificial intelligence coding agents to scope tasks, review output, and assess limitations in a monorepo.
- Clear written and spoken English communication skills and ability to influence asynchronously.
- Ability to manage priorities independently, work through ambiguity, take ownership, and seek guidance when needed.
What the Team is Saying
GitLab Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Medical coverage offers multiple U.S. plan options (Cigna in most states and Kaiser in CA/HI) alongside dental, vision, and an Employee Assistance Program. Handbook materials also note HSA availability with company contributions when enrolled in the HDHP.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is documented at 16 weeks, with U.S. leave administration supported by Tilt as of February 2, 2026. Caregiving and backup care resources are also referenced for many roles and locations.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Compensation practices are described in a public handbook with standardized, market‑based frameworks, annual reviews, equity refreshes, and clear ranges visible internally as of May 2026. This documentation helps candidates and employees see current specifics and understand how pay is set.
GitLab Insights
What We Do
GitLab is the Intelligent Orchestration Platform where software teams and their AI agents stay in flow to amplify their capacity for innovation. Together, they automate repetitive tasks to plan, build, secure, test, deploy and maintain software. With GitLab, software teams spend less time on coordination overhead and more time on the next big idea. What started in 2011 as an open source project to help one team of programmers collaborate is now the intelligent orchestration platform millions of people use to deliver software faster, more efficiently, while strengthening security and compliance. Since the beginning, we've been firm believers in remote work, open source, DevSecOps, and iteration. We get up and log on in the morning to work alongside the GitLab community to deliver new innovations every month that help teams and their AI agents ship great code faster.
Why Work With Us
GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Co-create the future with us as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.
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