Staff Backend Engineer, Developer Experience

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.

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.

*Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

As a Staff Backend Engineer in the Developer Experience group, you’ll work cross-functionally to help us identify and improve the engineering experience across GitLab’s internal engineering teams. We’re at a pivotal time in transforming our testing approach and development experience to enable engineers to deliver high-quality code efficiently and with confidence.

Developer Experience currently has six, globally distributed teams of Backend Engineers and Software Engineers in Test. This role will work across the entire group to help us identify and remove the biggest points of friction that affect development at GitLab. Expect to split your time between hands-on coding in Ruby and Go, designing scalable solutions and helping every team deliver. You’ll be instrumental in shaping our engineering culture across GitLab.

This is a highly visible role with strong company-wide support. You’ll be instrumental in shifting our culture and practices toward a cohesive Developer Experience Platform strategy—backed by buy-in and appetite for change.

Some examples of our projects

Identifying and removing the source of flakiness in our tests pipelines

Introducing comprehensive test coverage reporting to guide our decisions about what and when to test

Standardizing logging libraries and documentation to make it easy for all features and components to provide consistent logs

Providing stable, configurable development environments

What You’ll Do

Drive Technical Excellence Across Teams: Provide hands-on engineering contributions and technical leadership across six Developer Experience teams, jumping in to unblock critical work or accelerate high-impact initiatives

Champion Engineering Needs: Partner with engineering teams across GitLab to identify pain points, gather feedback, and translate day-to-day frustrations into actionable improvements for the Developer Experience roadmap

Transform Testing at Scale: Help us modernize our testing to support GitLab's growth—ensuring engineers have fast, reliable tools that catch issues early without slowing them down

Optimize CI/CD Pipelines: Reduce merge and CI friction by building workflows that deliver fast, actionable feedback—helping engineers iterate confidently and ship faster

Break Down Systemic Bottlenecks: Collaborate with Platform, Product, and Infrastructure teams to identify and eliminate the architectural and process friction that slows down development

Shape Engineering Culture: Foster a culture of continuous learning, inclusion, and improvement—where great developer experience is a shared value across the organization

What You’ll Bring

Deep