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GitLab is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join the External Agents team within the AI Catalog group. This role focuses on designing and building integrations that bring GitLab agents into external tools like Slack and connect external AI solutions (Claude Code, Codex) with GitLab's platform.
You will take end-to-end ownership of complex features, help shape architectural patterns for how GitLab exposes AI functionality, and collaborate with engineers across the Agent Foundations stage and adjacent AI teams. This is a high-visibility position at the intersection of GitLab's core platform and AI strategy.
Key responsibilities include:
- Develop, ship, and maintain secure, well-tested, performant external agent integrations across the GitLab monolith backend
- Collaborate with Product, UX, frontend, backend, 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 and extend automated testing (RSpec and other frameworks) to strengthen quality and reliability
- Share standards, patterns, and lessons with other engineers to support responsible AI integration
- Participate in Tier 2 on-call rotations, troubleshoot production issues, and improve observability
- Assess competitive landscape and help GitLab build strong AI integrations as agentic technology evolves
Required experience:
- Production experience with Ruby on Rails, including background jobs, APIs, and data models
- Comfort working across the stack in mature codebases
- Proficiency designing or extending REST/GraphQL APIs with attention to scalability and backward compatibility
- Practical experience designing and shipping AI-powered backend features or integrations
- Strong SQL skills and PostgreSQL familiarity, including efficient queries and data modeling
- Experience identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks at application and infrastructure layers
- Openness to learning in asynchronous, distributed teams; Python or Vue experience is a plus
The External Agents team initially consists of three engineers across EMEA time zones, with the broader AI Catalog group spanning eight+ engineers across APAC, EMEA, and the Americas.
