Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby on Rails)

GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating the rate of human progress. This mission is integral to our culture, influencing how we hire, build products, and lead our industry. We make this possible at GitLab by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values. Learn more about Life at GitLab.

Thanks to products like Duo Enterprise, and Duo Workflow, customers get the benefit of AI at every stage of the SDLC. The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier. All team members are encouraged and expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact across our global organisation.

An overview of this role

The Create:Code Review Backend team is responsible for all backend aspects of the Code Review Workflow and GitLab CLI product categories. We work primarily on the Merge Requests features of GitLab.

As a Senior Backend Engineer in Create:Code Review, you will play a critical role in developing and maintaining the backend systems that power Merge Requests, ensuring accuracy, reliability, and speed. Merge Requests being a core feature of the GitLab platform, you will work on building scalable, high-performance systems that support our customers with collaboration and iteration. Your contributions will directly impact the code review process for our clients, helping them improve code quality while optimizing for the speed at which code is delivered.

Some examples of our projects: 

• Duo Code Review - leveraging AI for automated code reviews
• Cells 1.0 - horizontally scaling the largest tables in the GitLab.com database
• Stacked Diffs for the CLI - introducing new development workflows
• Intelligent reviewer selection - improving efficiency of review workflows
• Rapid Diffs - improving performance of diffs rendering

What You’ll Do

• Develop features and improvements to the GitLab product in a secure, well-tested, and performant way.
• Collaborate with Product Management and other stakeholders within Engineering (Frontend, UX, etc.) to maintain a high bar for quality in a fast-paced, iterative environment.
• Advocate for improvements to product quality, security, and performance that have particular impact across your team.
• Solve technical problems of high scope and complexity.
• Exert influence on the overall objectives and long-range goals of your team.
• Help to define and improve our internal standards for style, maintainability, and best practices for a high-scale web environment. Maintain and advocate for these standards through code review.
• Represent GitLab and its values in public communication around broader initiatives, specific projects, and community contributions.
• Provide mentorship for Junior and Intermediate Engineers on your team to help them grow in their technical responsibilities and remove blockers to their autonomy.
• Confidently ship moderately sized features and improvements with minimal guidance and support from other team members. Collaborate with the team on larger projects.
• Improve the engineering projects at GitLab as a project maintainer. For more information regarding timelines and exceptions, see this page.
• Conduct Code Review within our Code Review Guidelines and ensure community contributions receive a swift response.
• Recognize impediments to our efficiency as a team (“technical debt”), propose and implement solutions.
• Participate in Tier 2 or Tier 3 weekday and weekend and occasional night on-call rotations to assist troubleshooting product operations, security operations, and urgent engineering issues.

What You’ll Bring

• Significant professional experience with Ruby on Rails.
• Professional experience with PostgreSQL or a comparable RDBMS.
• Professional experience with Sidekiq.
• Proficiency in the English language, both written and verbal, sufficient for success in a remote and largely asynchronous work environment.
• Demonstrated capacity to clearly and concisely communicate about complex technical, architectural, and/or organizational problems and propose thorough iterative solutions.
• Experience with performance and optimization problems and a demonstrated ability to both diagnose and prevent these problems.
• Comfort working in a highly agile, intensely iterative software development process.
• Demonstrated ability to onboard and integrate with an organization long-term.
• Positive and solution-oriented mindset.
• Effective communication skills: Regularly achieve consensus with peers, and clear status updates.
• An inclination towards communication, inclusion, and visibility.
• Experience owning a project from concept to production, including proposal, discussion, and execution.
• Self-motivated and self-managing, with excellent organizational skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work closely with other parts of the organization.
• Share our values, and work in accordance with those values.
• Ability to thrive in a fully remote organization.
• Ability to use GitLab.
• Comfort and familiarity with our code review process.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with JavaScript and associated web technologies (CSS, semantic HTML).
• Experience working with modern frontend frameworks (eg. React, Vue.js, Angular).
• Experience in a peak performance organization, preferably a tech startup.
• Experience with the GitLab product as a user or contributor.
• Product company experience.
• Experience working with a remote team.
• Enterprise software company experience.
• Developer platform/tool industry experience.
• Experience working with a global or otherwise multicultural team.
• Computer science education or equivalent experience.
• Passionate about/experienced with open source and developer tools.

About the team

Thanks to our Transparency value, you can see how we work in our team page. You can even see our roadmaps (Code Review Workflow, GitLab CLI) and listen to some of our meetings. 

The team is geographically dispersed across multiple time zones and we depend heavily on async communication. We collaborate closely with the Code Review Frontend team as part of the larger Code Review group.

How GitLab will support you

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• All remote, asynchronous work environment
• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and development budget 
• Parental leave 
• Home office support

Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.

To view the full job description and its compensation calculator, view our handbook. The compensation calculator can be found towards the bottom of the page.

Additional details about our process can be found on our hiring page.

Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.  

Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.

GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.