Forward Deployed Engineer, GitLab

• Staff-level experience building, operating, or improving complex production software systems
• Experience contributing to large, mature product codebases with high standards for testing, maintainability, performance, and security
• Strong Ruby on Rails or Go experience and the ability to contribute directly to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems
• Experience with AI-assisted software development, agentic workflows, AI governance, model evaluation, context management, prompt and workflow design, or AI adoption in enterprise environments
• Experience diagnosing complex system behavior across application code, data stores, infrastructure, observability, networking, APIs, and customer usage patterns
• Deep knowledge of modern DevSecOps workflows, including Git, merge requests, CI/CD, security controls, compliance needs, and enterprise software delivery
• Experience working with strategic customers or senior technical stakeholders in ambiguous, high-impact situations
• The ability to coordinate across product, engineering, field, and customer teams without formal authority
• Strong written communication and sound judgment, including the ability to create technical narratives and distinguish reusable product work from customer-specific customization
• We welcome candidates with different backgrounds and levels of experience. Many successful candidates don't meet every qualification. If you're excited about this role, we encourage you to apply and let our recruiting team assess your application

Desirable

• Strategic customers sometimes encounter challenges that are too broad, deep, urgent, or cross-functional for any single team to own from start to finish. These challenges may involve product gaps, performance degradation, scale bottlenecks, AI governance, adoption blockers, architectural constraints, Git usage patterns, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) complexity, application programming interface (API) automation, security requirements, or operational instability
• Forward Deployed Engineering provides technical stewardship in these moments. The team doesn't simply observe, report, or escalate. You'll engage directly, diagnose the underlying technical problem, collaborate with the right teams, contribute code or technical solutions where appropriate, and transition the outcome into normal ownership once the customer is stable and the learning can be reused
• Contribute production-quality code to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems
• Develop bug fixes, features, integrations, tooling, and performance improvements when strategic customer outcomes require direct engineering work
• Work within GitLab’s product and engineering processes, including issue discovery, merge request creation, testing, review, documentation, and maintainability
• Partner with Product and Engineering so customer-driven solutions support long-term product direction rather than becoming one-off customizations
• Turn blockers discovered in the field into durable product improvements, reference architectures, documentation, and repeatable implementation patterns
• Engage with strategically important customers when adoption, retention, executive confidence, or public trust is materially at risk
• Diagnose complex problems across GitLab product behavior, customer architecture, Git internals, CI/CD workflows, API usage, observability, infrastructure, networking, and cloud environments
• Coordinate across Product, Engineering, SRE, Support, SA, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and customer technical teams to drive resolution from discovery through handoff
• Provide recommendations grounded in data, traces, and systems analysis to improve GitLab usage, workflows, automation, and architecture
• Create durable outcomes without establishing permanent dependency on Forward Deployed Engineering
• Drive governed, measurable, and production-oriented adoption of GitLab Duo Agent Platform with strategic customers
• Identify and resolve AI adoption blockers involving governance, usage controls, auditability, security, compliance, operating models, workflow design, and integrations
• Develop customer-safe adoption patterns for the agentic software development lifecycle (SDLC), AI-assisted development, intent-based review, AI governance, and human-in-the-loop software delivery
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Field, and Customer Success teams to turn AI adoption learning into reusable guidance and product improvements
• Create technical narratives grounded in customer experience and product reality that can help shape the industry’s approach
• Contribute to Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, reference architectures, technical strategy memos, and adoption frameworks
• Guide ideas through discovery, formulation, validation, amplification, and adoption across GitLab
• Partner with SA, CSA, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Product Marketing Management, CSM, Support, and executive stakeholders to make technical thought leadership a shared company capability
• Success in this role may include:
• Stabilizing strategic customer adoption or retention risks
• Fixing product bugs or contributing features
• Removing AI adoption blockers for strategic accounts
• Creating reusable implementation patterns and transitioning them to long-term owners
• Producing or enabling Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, or technical narratives
• Resolving cross-functional customer challenges without creating permanent dependency on Forward Deployed Engineering
• Equipping Product, Engineering, Support, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and SA teams with better guidance based on learning from the field
• Increasing adoption and effective use of GitLab capabilities, especially GitLab Duo and GitLab Duo Agent Platform, in targeted accounts