Staff Backend Engineer, Developer Experience

ABOUT THE ROLE GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, trusted by more than 50 million users and half of the Fortune 100 to ship secure software faster. As a Staff Backend Engineer in the Developer Experience group, you will be at the forefront of reshaping how our internal teams build, test, and ship code. Your work will drive the evolution of our testing strategy, CI/CD pipelines, and developer tooling, enabling engineers across the organization to deliver high‑quality code with confidence and speed. You will collaborate with six globally distributed teams, stepping in to unblock critical work, design scalable solutions, and champion initiatives that remove friction from the development lifecycle. Your influence will extend across Platform, Product, and Infrastructure, shaping a cohesive Developer Experience Platform strategy that aligns with GitLab’s values of collaboration, iteration, and transparency. WHAT YOU'LL DO You will lead technical excellence across the Developer Experience teams, providing hands‑on engineering contributions and guiding best practices in Ruby and Go. You will partner with engineering groups to surface pain points, translate feedback into actionable roadmap items, and prioritize initiatives that improve developer productivity. You will modernize our testing ecosystem, introducing comprehensive coverage reporting and eliminating flakiness in pipelines. You will optimize CI/CD workflows to reduce merge friction and deliver fast, actionable feedback. You will collaborate with cross‑functional partners to identify and dismantle systemic bottlenecks that impede development speed. You will nurture a culture of continuous learning, inclusion, and improvement, ensuring a shared commitment to exceptional developer experience. WHAT YOU'LL NEED You will bring deep experience with developer tooling, DevEx strategies, and large‑scale testing frameworks. You will have led platform or transformation initiatives across multiple teams, demonstrating the ability to influence without authority. You will possess a strong product mindset and a passion for empowering developers. You will be familiar with DevOps workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and performance optimization at scale. You will excel in written and verbal communication in a remote‑first environment, translating complex technical concepts into clear, actionable guidance. You will align with GitLab’s core values, especially collaboration, iteration, and transparency. WHY REMOTE GitLab’s distributed, asynchronous culture empowers engineers to work when they are most productive, while still maintaining strong collaboration through shared documentation, real‑time chat, and regular virtual syncs. The remote model eliminates commute time, allowing you to focus on deep work and creative problem‑solving. Flexible schedules support work‑life balance, and the company’s commitment to asynchronous communication ensures that all voices are heard regardless of time zone. BENEFITS Competitive health, dental, and vision coverage; generous paid time off and holiday schedule; a remote work stipend; a learning and development budget; equity and performance bonuses; and a culture that values well‑being, inclusion, and continuous growth.