Senior Backend Engineer, AMER

ABOUT THE ROLE GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, trusted by more than 50 million users and over half of the Fortune 100 to ship secure, high‑quality software at scale. As a Senior Backend Engineer in the AMER region, you will shape the core architecture of this global platform, driving the evolution of backend capabilities that power millions of developers worldwide. Your work will span product, frontend, infrastructure, data, and security teams, ensuring that every decision enhances reliability, performance, and security while aligning with GitLab’s mission to accelerate digital transformation. WHAT YOU'LL DO You will design and ship moderate to complex backend features with minimal guidance, choosing between modular‑monolith, shared components, or independent services based on pragmatic trade‑offs. You will set and enforce backend standards for code style, maintainability, testing, APIs, and operational readiness, raising the bar for quality across the organization. You will mentor junior and intermediate engineers, removing technical blockers and improving delivery practices through rigorous code and design reviews. You will diagnose and prevent performance and reliability issues at scale, participate in incident response, and act as a technical owner when required. You will integrate agentic AI into production engineering workflows, evaluating its effectiveness and coaching others on responsible, high‑judgment use. WHAT YOU'LL NEED You possess deep backend expertise, with a strong command of architecture, APIs, data systems, and performance tuning in complex product environments. You are proficient in modern backend languages and systems programming, valuing the ability to learn and adapt over mastery of a single language. You have architectural judgment, having designed or evolved modular backend boundaries, bounded contexts, and migration‑safe architectures. You lead through influence, technical judgment, and clear written communication, bridging product needs and technical reality. You bring proven experience building or operating agentic AI systems in production, architecting loops, tool‑use, and error‑handling strategies that ensure reliability at scale. Additional helpful experience includes high‑throughput distributed systems, concurrency, profiling, containerized production operations such as Kubernetes, deep database performance knowledge (PostgreSQL, ClickHouse), large‑scale modular monoliths or event‑driven systems, and public technical communication or open‑source maintenance. WHY REMOTE GitLab’s remote‑first culture is built on asynchronous collaboration, clear written communication, and self‑direction. Team members across the globe rely on shared documentation, recorded meetings, and well‑structured code reviews to stay aligned, allowing you to work flexibly while contributing to a high‑impact product. The distributed model empowers you to balance personal and professional commitments, fostering a healthy work‑life rhythm and enabling you to focus on delivering value to millions of users without the constraints of a traditional office environment. BENEFITS Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents Competitive paid time off and a generous parental leave policy Remote work stipend and equipment allowance Annual learning budget and access to industry conferences Equity participation and performance‑based bonuses Wellness programs, mental health support, and employee assistance resources