Senior Backend Engineer, Gitlab Delivery: Upgrades

<div class="content-intro"><p>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.</p> <p>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 <a href="https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/&quot;&gt;values&lt;/a> and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuZIb5zszQI&quot;&gt;Co-create the future with us</a> as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.</p> <p>*<em>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.</em></p></div><h2>An overview of this role</h2> <p>As a <strong><strong class="textBold">Senior Backend Engineer</strong></strong> on the GitLab Upgrades team, you’ll help self-managed customers run GitLab reliably by building and maintaining the infrastructure, tooling, and automation behind our deployment options. You’ll work across <strong><strong class="textBold">Omnibus GitLab</strong></strong>, <strong><strong class="textBold">GitLab Helm Charts</strong></strong>, the <strong><strong class="textBold">GitLab Environment Toolkit (Get)</strong></strong>, and the <strong><strong class="textBold">GitLab Operator</strong></strong> to make GitLab easier to deploy, more secure by default, and scalable across major cloud providers and a wide range of customer environments. In this role, you’ll partner closely with engineering teams and act as a bridge to customer needs, improving installation, upgrade, and day-to-day operations for production-grade GitLab deployments.</p> <p>Some examples of our projects:</p> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Evolving</strong></strong> Omnibus GitLab, Helm Charts, GET, and the GitLab Operator to support validated reference architectures for enterprise-scale deployments</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Building</strong></strong> automation pipelines and observability into deployment tooling to validate, test, and operate GitLab across Kubernetes and other self-managed environments</li> </ul> <h2>What you’ll do</h2> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Maintain</strong></strong> and evolve the Omnibus GitLab package to support reliable, production-ready self-managed deployments, improving deployment stability, increasing upgrade success rates, and reducing escalation rates.</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Develop</strong></strong> and improve GitLab Helm Charts so core components integrate cleanly and scale across supported environments, reducing deployment friction, shortening time to deploy, and improving operational consistency at scale.</li> <li value="3"><strong><strong class="textBold">Enhance</strong></strong> the GitLab Environment Toolkit (Get), validated reference architectures, and the GitLab Operator for secure, Kubernetes-native lifecycle management, improving reliability, strengthening security baselines, and accelerating adoption in customer environments.</li> <li value="4"><strong><strong class="textBold">Improve</strong></strong> installation, upgrade, and operational workflows across deployment methods to create a consistent experience for self-managed customers, reducing operational overhead, lowering failure rates, and increasing consistency across deployment methods.</li> <li value="5"><strong><strong class="textBold">Partner</strong></strong> with Security to address vulnerabilities and deliver secure defaults and configurations in the deployment stack, reducing exposure to vulnerabilities and improving baseline security across self-managed deployments.</li> <li value="6"><strong><strong class="textBold">Build</strong></strong> and maintain automation and continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines that validate and test Omnibus, Charts, Get, and the Operator, increasing release confidence, improving test coverage, and reducing regressions across deployment tooling.</li> <li value="7"><strong><strong class="textBold">Work closely</strong></strong> with Distribution Engineers, Site Reliability Engineers, Release Managers, and Development teams to integrate new features into deployment methods and keep them reliable, scalable, and aligned with customer needs, improving delivery readiness and reducing operational issues after release.</li> <li value="8"><strong><strong class="textBold">Guide</strong></strong> architectural direction, mentor backend engineers, and contribute to the roadmap for self-managed delivery, improving technical quality, accelerating delivery effectiveness, and strengthening team execution.</li> </ul> <h2>What you’ll bring</h2> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Experience</strong></strong> operating backend services in production, including deployment, monitoring, and maintenance in Kubernetes- and Helm-based environments.</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Proficiency</strong></strong> in <strong><strong class="textBold">Go</strong></strong> for building observable and resilient services, with working knowledge of <strong><strong class="textBold">Ruby</strong></strong> as a useful addition.</li> <li value="3"><strong><strong class="textBold">Hands-on practice</strong></strong> with infrastructure as code, including tools such as <strong><strong class="textBold">Terraform</strong></strong>, and with managing infrastructure across cloud providers such as <strong><strong class="textBold">Google Cloud Platform</strong></strong>, <strong><strong class="textBold">Amazon Web Services</strong></strong>, or <strong><strong class="textBold">Microsoft Azure</strong></strong>.</li> <li value="4"><strong><strong class="textBold">Knowledge</strong></strong> of database design, operations, and troubleshooting, especially for <strong><strong class="textBold">PostgreSQL</strong></strong> in secure and scalable setups.</li> <li value="5"><strong><strong class="textBold">Knowledge</strong></strong> of secure, scalable, and reliable deployment practices, including service scaling and rollout strategies.</li> <li value="6"><strong><strong class="textBold">Familiarity</strong></strong> with observability tools and patterns such as <strong><strong class="textBold">Prometheus</strong></strong> and <strong><strong class="textBold">Grafana</strong></strong> to monitor system health and performance.</li> <li value="7"><strong><strong class="textBold">Ability</strong></strong> to work effectively in large codebases and coordinate across distributed, cross-functional teams using clear written communication.</li> <li value="8"><strong><strong class="textBold">Openness</strong></strong> to transferable experience from related backend or infrastructure roles, along with the ability to write user-focused documentation and implementation guides.</li> </ul> <h2>About the team</h2> <p>The <strong><strong class="textBold">Upgrades team</strong></strong> is part of <strong><strong class="textBold">GitLab Delivery</strong></strong> and focuses on helping self-managed customers run GitLab successfully in their own environments, from smaller deployments to large enterprise footprints. We own deployment and operational tooling across our work on Omnibus GitLab, Helm Charts, Get, and the GitLab Operator, and we work as a glob