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We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for GitLab's Portfolio Experience team. You'll be an experienced product engineer who incorporates user needs into feature decisions and brings full stack experience, with a current focus on backend. You'll spend as much time understanding user needs and shaping how features should work as you do building them, working directly with product, users, and open source contributors.
You'll help evolve the backend architecture that powers the work items platform, which must serve millions of work items in a single user's view across tens of thousands of groups and projects.
What you’ll do- Collaborate with product and other engineers to shape requirements, understand user needs, and break complex projects into shippable iterations.
- Design and implement backend and real-time features in the GitLab monolith, including GraphQL and RESTful APIs and subscriptions, with a focus on performance, reliability, and user impact.
- Build and evolve portfolio planning capabilities, including work item hierarchy, status rollup, and capacity planning.
- Improve PostgreSQL performance at scale through query and write optimization, indexing, denormalization, partitioning, and moving suitable workloads to Elasticsearch or ClickHouse.
- Create proofs of concept for complex work, maintain extensive automated test coverage, and support safe rollouts with feature flags and strong observability.
- Mentor engineers and open source contributors through code reviews, pairing, regular feedback, contributor issues, and hackathons.
- Participate in on-call rotations, troubleshoot production issues, contribute to root cause analysis, and improve the team's development and review processes.
- Experience representing the user perspective while working through trade-offs with product managers, engineers, and users.
- Experience leading projects involving several engineers over multiple months and supporting others through thoughtful code reviews, feedback, hiring, career development, and mentoring.
- Full stack experience with a current backend focus, including proficiency with Ruby and Ruby on Rails and an understanding of how complex modern frontends work.
- Strong PostgreSQL skills and experience improving database performance at scale through query and write optimization, indexing, denormalization, and partitioning.
- Experience designing and evolving GraphQL and/or RESTful APIs with attention to scalability, backward compatibility, and clear contracts with frontend clients.
- Experience improving large automated test suites, including the performance and reliability of the tests themselves.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills for an asynchronous, distributed environment.
- Experience integrating artificial intelligence into development workflows. Experience building artificial intelligence-powered features or working with Elasticsearch, ClickHouse, or Python is a plus.
We welcome candidates with different backgrounds and transferable skills. If you're excited about this role but don't meet every qualification, we encourage you to apply.
About the teamWe are a team of 4 - 2x Backend Engineers, 2x Frontend Engineers located across Europe and Canada. We own the work item hierarchy, including Epic, Issue, and Task relationships, and top-down planning capabilities such as status rollup and capacity planning. We work async-first in two-week iterations, with retrospectives and a weekly sync.
The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. See more information on our benefits and equity. Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.
- 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
- Proficiency with Ruby and Ruby on Rails
- Strong PostgreSQL skills including query/write optimization, indexing, denormalization, and partitioning
- Experience designing and evolving GraphQL and/or RESTful APIs with attention to scalability and backward compatibility
- Full stack experience with a current backend focus and understanding of modern frontends
- Experience representing user perspective and collaborating with product and stakeholders on trade-offs
- Experience leading multi-engineer projects and mentoring/performing hiring and career development activities
- Experience improving large automated test suites, including test performance and reliability
- Experience participating in on-call rotations, troubleshooting production issues, and conducting root cause analysis
- Strong written and verbal communication skills for an asynchronous, distributed environment
- Experience integrating artificial intelligence into development workflows
- Experience building AI-powered features or working with Elasticsearch, ClickHouse, or Python
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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