Staff 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">Staff Engineer</strong></strong> on the GitLab Delivery - Upgrades team, you’ll guide the technical direction for GitLab’s self-managed deployment strategy so customers can deploy, upgrade, and run GitLab reliably in their own infrastructure with minimal disruption. You’ll serve as a technical anchor for the team, working closely with your engineering manager, product manager, and partners across Site Reliability Engineering, Release, Security, and Development to shape cloud-native, operator-driven deployment patterns that reduce operational complexity and upgrade friction. In your first year, you’ll help define the architecture for zero-downtime upgrades, strengthen observability and reliability practices, and guide the next generation of deployment automation for self-managed GitLab environments.</p> <p><strong><strong class="textBold">Some examples of our projects:</strong></strong></p> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Evolving GitLab Operator and Helm charts</strong></strong> to support zero-downtime upgrades for complex, stateful GitLab installations</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Advancing the GitLab Environment Toolkit</strong></strong> to simplify large-scale, production-ready self-managed deployments</li> </ul> <h2>What you’ll do</h2> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Guide</strong></strong> the technical vision and architecture for GitLab’s cloud-native, self-managed deployments and upgrade workflows.</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Establish</strong></strong> operational maturity standards, service integration patterns, and deployment models that help development teams manage the lifecycle of their components.</li> <li value="3"><strong><strong class="textBold">Design</strong></strong> and maintain Kubernetes Operators, Helm charts, and upgrade orchestration tooling for self-managed GitLab deployments across varied environments.</li> <li value="4"><strong><strong class="textBold">Develop</strong></strong> automation and integration frameworks for database migrations, rolling deployments, compatibility checks, and rollback paths.</li> <li value="5"><strong><strong class="textBold">Define</strong></strong> database and application lifecycle strategies, including safe PostgreSQL migration approaches and validation mechanisms that reduce downtime risk.</li> <li value="6"><strong><strong class="textBold">Work with</strong></strong> Product Management, GitLab.com Site Reliability Engineering, GitLab Dedicated, and development teams to align deployment patterns with customer needs.</li> <li value="7"><strong><strong class="textBold">Mentor</strong></strong> engineers and enable customer-facing teams through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and runbooks.</li> <li value="8"><strong><strong class="textBold">Drive</strong></strong> observability, testing, performance, and resilience practices for self-managed deployments, and contribute to incident response and post-incident learning.</li> </ul> <h2>What you’ll bring</h2> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Strong software engineering experience</strong></strong> designing and delivering production systems that customers install and operate in their own infrastructure.</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Proficiency in Go</strong></strong> for large, complex codebases, with familiarity with Ruby on Rails and Rails application architecture as a useful addition.</li> <li value="3"><strong><strong class="textBold">Hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production</strong></strong>, including building and maintaining Operators, designing Helm charts for stateful applications, and working with Custom Resource Definitions, admission controllers, and controller patterns.</li> <li value="4"><strong><strong class="textBold">Knowledge of cloud-native systems and tooling</strong></strong>, such as service mesh, observability stacks, infrastructure as code, and automation tools like Terraform or Ansible.</li> <li value="5"><strong><strong class="textBold">Experience with stateful workloads and databases</strong></strong>, including PostgreSQL schema design and migrations, persistent volumes, storage classes, and approaches for reducing downtime during upgrades.</li> <li value="6"><strong><strong class="textBold">Understanding of Linux systems and production operations</strong></strong>, including package management, systemd, system-level debugging, observability, incident response, and on-call participation.</li> <li value="7"><strong><strong class="textBold">Ability to guide through influence</strong></strong>, including writing clear technical proposals, documenting decisions, mentoring engineers, and working effectively across teams.</li> <li value="8"><strong><strong class="textBold">Interest in open source infrastructure or deployment tooling</strong></strong>, or transferable experience from adjacent domains, with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to different audiences.</li> </ul> <h2>About the team</h2> <p>The Delivery - Upgrades team sits within GitLab Delivery and focuses on delivering GitLab to self-managed users through supported, validated deployment tooling. We own and evolve the GitLab Omnibus package, Helm charts, GitLab Operator, and the GitLab Environment Toolkit, and we work asynchronously across regions with partners in Site Reliability Engineering, Release, Security, and Development. Our work centers on enabling zero-downtime upgrades, reducing operational complexity at scale, supporting GitLab’s cloud-native transition while continuing to serve existing deployments, and improving the upgrade experience for customers running GitLab in diverse environments. For more on how we work, see [Link: Team Handbook Page].</p><div class="content-conclusion"><h4><strong>How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees</strong></h4> <ul> <li><a href="https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/benefits/general-and-entity-benefits/&quot;&gt;Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being</a></li> <li><a href="https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/paid-time-off/&quot;&gt;Flexible Paid Time Off</a>&nbsp;</li> <li><a href="https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/erg-guide/#:~:text=Definition%20of%20the%20TMRG%20%2D%20Team%20Member%20Resource%20Groups,-TMRGs%20are%20voluntary&amp;amp;text=The%20purpose%20for%20this%20type,developing%20the%20sense%20of%20belonging.&quot;&gt;Team Member Resource Groups</a></li> <li><a href="https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/stock-options/&quot;&gt;Equity Compensation &amp; Employee Stock Purchase Plan</a></li> <li><a href="https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/growth-and-development/&quot;&gt;Growth and Development Fund</a></li> <li><a href="https://about.gitlab.