Principal Software Engineer, GitLab
Group Tenant Scale
$157.9-338.4k
One DevOps platform
Open for applications
One DevOps platform
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$157.9-338.4k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make it so that everyone can contribute. When everyone can contribute, users become contributors and we greatly increase the rate of innovation.
Role
Who you are
- Extensive experience designing, developing, migrating, scaling, and operating large distributed systems in a SaaS context
- Hands-on programming experience in Ruby and/or Go, with the ability to dive into code, review implementations, and guide technical design
- Proven track record leading transformations from monolithic to distributed architectures, ideally including Postgres sharding or other database partitioning strategies
- Hands-on expertise with service communication and observability at scale (e.g. service mesh/Istio, Kafka, tracing/metrics)
- Principal-level technical leadership: ability to set strategy, influence across organizations, and mentor principal and senior engineers
- Balance of infrastructure depth and application architecture awareness; skilled at making system-level tradeoffs that prioritize reliability and customer experience
- Excellent communication skills; able to make complex systems understandable to technical and non-technical audiences
- Bonus: Experience in regulated or high-reliability domains (finance, healthcare, government, telecom)
What the job involves
- Group Tenant Scale (GTS) is re-architecting GitLab.com into a modern, distributed SaaS platform
- Today, GitLab.com runs as a single massive multi-tenant instance
- Tomorrow, it will be made up of Cells (self-contained clusters) and Organizations (logical groupings of tenants), supported by OrgMover (seamless migration tooling)
- This transformation will make GitLab.com horizontally scalable, resilient, and flexible—so customers of every size experience high reliability, global reach, and freedom to grow with GitLab
- As a Principal Engineer, you’ll shape the technical foundation of GitLab’s future SaaS
- You’ll drive the design of distributed systems at scale, influence architectural strategy across engineering, and partner with leaders to align infrastructure with business outcomes
- You'll lead architecture and design for Cells, Organizations and OrgMover, enabling Postgres sharding, zero-downtime migrations, and global SaaS scalability and regionality
- Solve complex distributed systems challenges: tenant isolation, regional distribution, multi-region replication, observability, fault tolerance, and migrations
- Partner across infrastructure, product, and executive teams to ensure our SaaS evolution aligns with both technical excellence and business needs
- Translate architectural tradeoffs into clear direction for engineering managers, senior engineers, and executives
- Mentor and elevate engineers across teams, raising the bar for technical leadership and inclusive collaboration
- Provide thought leadership inside and outside GitLab on SaaS scaling, distributed systems, and platform reliability
- As part of this team, you will be at the center of one of the most impactful transformations in GitLab’s history
- You will help reshape GitLab.com into a cloud-scale SaaS platform that powers the next decade of growth, while collaborating with some of the best engineers in distributed systems, mentoring others, and leaving a lasting architectural legacy
- You'll be working across a fully remote, asynchronous environment across global time zones
Our take
GitLab is an open-source collaboration platform for developers. It enables teams to build code quickly from anywhere without compromising on security or quality. GitLab already has an estimated 30M+ users from all over the world.
According to a 2021 GitLab report, 60% of developers can release code 2x faster with DevOps platforms that bring teams together and accelerate processes. It stands out by catering to programmers of all experiences. Gitlab's version control system helps streamline the process of creating, maintaining, and deploying code, whoever you are.
GitLab was in the right place to capitalize on the recent trend toward rapid digital transformation and remote working. This trend is expected to continue to grow, and with it, GitLab's popularity. With its successful 2021 IPO and the patronage of major brands such as Nasdaq and Jaguar Land Rover, GitLab is expected to solidify its position as the go-to platform for development teams.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
15% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Sep 2019
$268m
SERIES E
Dec 2018
$20m
SERIES D
Total funding: $434.8m
Company benefits
- We offer benefits to manage your health, wealth, and well-being regardless of location
- Flexibility in schedule to be there for life’s important moments
- Equity compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan offered
- Generous Paid Time Off
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Sid Sijbrandij
(CEO)Studied Physics at the University of Twente. Interned at P&G and IBM. Was Lead Architect at the Netherlands' Ministry of Justice from 2009 to 2012. Founded app store Comcoaster in 2008, and then co-founded GitLab in 2012.
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