Backend Engineer

GitLab
UK
2 days ago
Apply on www.workingnomads.com
Prepare application

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Experience level
Expert
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English

Tech stack

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) Software Bug Management Code Review Relational Databases Ruby Software Configuration Management SQL Databases Web Applications Caching Technical Debt Backend Gitlab
+3 more
Git Integration Tests Graphql

Job description

  • Develop secure, well-tested, performant features and improvements using Ruby and GraphQL.
  • Work through complex requirements and legacy constraints to deliver clear solutions while protecting the reliability of this critical system.
  • Contribute to backend services, application programming interfaces, data models, and business logic for repository management.
  • Collaborate across functions and teams, both asynchronously and synchronously, involving domain experts and seeking guidance when needed.
  • Use artificial intelligence agents for well-scoped work when they can speed up delivery without sacrificing quality, and critically review their output.
  • Write maintainable code that follows GitLab’s standards and apply feedback from code review.
  • Help strengthen reliability by monitoring production health metrics, participating in Tier 2 on-call, troubleshooting incidents, contributing to root cause analysis, and improving observability and resiliency.
  • Share knowledge through code review, technical documentation, and everyday collaboration while learning from others., The functional team works across Europe and North America, supporting both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. It includes six engineers, and this role offers an opportunity to grow your backend skills, learn from experienced team members, and contribute to our technical direction. We work closely with Code Review and Gitaly, alongside sibling teams covering Repository Sync & Interop, Source Code Experience, and Repository Scale, Performance & Git Infrastructure. We’re maturing GitLab’s branch protection offering while maintaining availability, reliability, and stability through bug fixes and focused technical debt work. Our roadmap includes Branch Rules, Codeowners, merge strategy options, and artificial intelligence-powered repository management and configuration.

Requirements

  • Professional experience building backend web applications, services, or application programming interfaces, with experience using Ruby and GraphQL or the ability to learn them.
  • An understanding of relational databases, structured query language, data modeling, caching, background processing, and backend performance practices.
  • Experience contributing to policy, permissions, or rules-based features in web applications and helping make that complexity reliable and maintainable.
  • Experience writing backend unit and integration tests, with familiarity with Git and collaborative code review processes.
  • Experience using artificial intelligence coding tools or agents, with the ability to review their output and recognize when additional guidance is needed.
  • Clear written and spoken English communication skills, including sharing useful status updates and collaborating in a remote, asynchronous environment.
  • The ability to manage assigned priorities, work through ambiguity, take ownership of your work, and seek guidance for decisions that are difficult to reverse.

About the company

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., We’re looking for a Backend Engineer to join our Repository Management team within GitLab’s Source Code stage. You’ll help customers configure repositories with confidence so their GitLab projects support the way their teams work. As artificial intelligence agents increasingly write and manage code alongside people, you’ll build guardrails that make development safe and trustworthy. You’ll turn complex policy and repository management needs into reliable backend solutions that support people and the agents working on their behalf.

You’ll work in one of GitLab’s oldest and most complex product areas, using Ruby and GraphQL to improve a critical system that serves GitLab.com, self-managed instances, and GitLab Dedicated. Source Code provides the interface layer, through Gitaly, to the Git repositories that account for a large portion of GitLab traffic. With support from experienced team members, you’ll help maintain high reliability through performance and structured query language tuning, caching, rate limiting, testing, observability, and resiliency. You’ll collaborate with product management, product design, testing, security, user experience research, technical writing, Gitaly, Code Review, and Source Code Experience to deliver reliable and performant systems.

Apply for this position

This job is hosted externally. Click below to view the full posting and apply.

Apply on www.workingnomads.com
Prepare application

Good distractions

Talks and stories from around this role — technically off-topic, practically not.

1:38 min

Transitioning into backend engineering from web development

Stefan Lingler Stefan Lingler +1 · Coffee With Developers

6:21 min

Investigating push inefficiencies with upstream Git experts

Jonathan Creamer · Coffee With Developers

50 sec

Why developer happiness matters in web frameworks

Eileen Uchitelle Eileen Uchitelle +1 · Coffee With Developers

6:14 min

Structuring CI/CD pipelines with integrated security and quality checks

Christoph Ruggenthaler · LIVE

1:47 min

Transitioning from internships to full-stack backend engineering

Nicolas Haunold Nicolas Haunold +1 · Coffee With Developers

56 sec

Favorite git commands and the importance of patch commits

Eileen Uchitelle Eileen Uchitelle +1 · Coffee With Developers

Videos

See all

Related articles

See all