Staff Backend Engineer, Developer Experience
About The Position
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.
Requirements
- Deep experience with developer tooling, DevEx strategies, and testing frameworks at scale
- Experience leading platform or transformation initiatives across multiple teams
- Proven ability to influence without authority and collaborate across functions
- Familiarity with DevOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in a remote-first environment
- A product mindset with a passion for empowering developers
- Alignment with GitLab values, especially collaboration, iteration, and transparency
Responsibilities
- Provide hands-on engineering contributions and technical leadership across six Developer Experience teams, jumping in to unblock critical work or accelerate high-impact initiatives
- 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
- Help us modernize our testing to support GitLab's growth—ensuring engineers have fast, reliable tools that catch issues early without slowing them down
- Reduce merge and CI friction by building workflows that deliver fast, actionable feedback—helping engineers iterate confidently and ship faster
- Collaborate with Platform, Product, and Infrastructure teams to identify and eliminate the architectural and process friction that slows down development
- Foster a culture of continuous learning, inclusion, and improvement—where great developer experience is a shared value across the organization
Benefits
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Team Member Resource Groups
- Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Growth and Development Fund
- Parental Leave
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
