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GitLab is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer for its Core DevOps team. You will design, implement, and evolve product capabilities while solving high-scope backend problems and influencing the technical and product direction of teams. This role moves beyond assigned work to actively improve the quality, reliability, and performance of systems across product, frontend, infrastructure, data, and security boundaries.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design and ship moderate to complex backend features with minimal guidance, making pragmatic architectural choices between modular-monolith code, shared components, or independently operated services
- Advocate for product quality, security, availability, and performance by defining backend standards for style, maintainability, testing, APIs, and operational readiness
- Mentor associate and intermediate engineers, remove technical blockers, and improve team delivery practices through code and design reviews
- Diagnose and prevent performance and reliability issues at scale; participate in incident response and act as technical owner where appropriate
- Integrate AI into production engineering work to improve outcomes, evaluate effectiveness, and coach others on responsible use
- Work across boundaries making sound architectural trade-offs, communicating complex ideas clearly in an asynchronous environment
You will shape the architecture of a global platform used by millions, with technical agency to influence team objectives and long-range goals. The role emphasizes autonomy in a remote-first, asynchronous organization where clear written communication and self-direction are essential. You'll partner closely with product managers and designers to ensure technical decisions deliver genuine value to users.
Requirements:
- Deep backend expertise: strong command of backend architecture, APIs, data systems, and performance tuning in complex product or service environments
- Proficiency in modern backend languages with deep understanding of systems programming; ability to learn and adapt valued over mastery of a single language
- Experience designing or evolving modular backend boundaries, bounded contexts, and migration-safe architectures
- Ability to lead through influence, technical judgment, and clear written communication, bridging product needs and technical reality
- Proven experience building or operating agentic systems in production—moving beyond prompt engineering to architecting loops, tool-use, and error-handling strategies that ensure reliability at scale
