Senior Backend Engineer, GitLab
Gitlab Delivery, Runway
+ Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
One DevOps platform
Be an early applicant
One DevOps platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
+ Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
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
- Experience operating and evolving production Kubernetes clusters (upgrades, scaling, disaster recovery, reliability) across one or more cloud environments (for example, Amazon EKS, Google GKE, or Azure AKS)
- Experience designing and running GitOps-based continuous delivery workflows with ArgoCD, Flux, or similar tools; able to establish and maintain deployment standards across environments
- Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform or equivalent), including reusable modules, state management, and drift detection practices for safe infrastructure provisioning
- Ability to write and maintain automation using a scripting language (for example, Python, Bash, or Go) and guide others on best practices
- Working knowledge of networking fundamentals (DNS, load balancing, ingress) and related platform patterns (for example, service mesh) to design reliable network architectures
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including mentoring, writing clear system documentation, and establishing runbooks and best practices across teams
- Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application
What the job involves
- As a Senior Engineer on the Runway team, you'll lead the design, evolution, and operation of the Kubernetes-based platform and developer tooling that powers GitLab's engineering organization
- You'll drive strategic infrastructure initiatives across platform architecture, automation, and developer experience. That includes operating production Kubernetes clusters across cloud environments, scaling our ArgoCD-based GitOps workflows, and setting infrastructure-as-code practices and standards across teams
- You'll mentor engineers, influence architectural decisions, and drive platform improvements that enhance reliability, observability, and security controls like RBAC and secrets management. Your work will establish clear patterns that make it easier for application teams to adopt modern practices and ship with confidence
- Lead the operation and evolution of production-grade Kubernetes clusters across cloud environments, making architectural decisions on upgrades, scaling, disaster recovery, and reliability improvements that impact the entire organization
- Define and drive GitOps strategy and standards across the organization, owning ArgoCD-based workflows by architecting Application Sets, sync policies, and deployment standards, and mentoring teams on GitOps best practices
- Architect and establish Terraform-based infrastructure-as-code standards across teams, building reusable modules and practices that enable safe, scalable cloud infrastructure provisioning while establishing clear patterns for state management and drift detection
- Lead platform observability strategy and incident response processes, set standards for monitoring and post-incident reviews, and drive organization-wide improvements to availability, performance, and resilience
- Partner with and mentor application teams to onboard services onto the platform, establishing patterns for documentation, runbooks, and self-service tooling that scale across the organization and improve developer productivity
- Design and establish security control standards such as role-based access control (RBAC), network policies, and secrets management (for example, Vault, Sealed Secrets, or External Secrets Operator) that meet compliance requirements and scale across the organization
- Drive integration of platform capabilities with continuous integration pipelines (for example, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Tekton) to establish end-to-end delivery workflows that set standards across the organization
- Some examples of our projects:
- Evolve ArgoCD GitOps standards across environments (Application Sets, sync policies, and deployment guardrails)
- Build reusable Terraform modules and practices for safe, repeatable cloud infrastructure provisioning and drift detection
- The Runway team builds and operates the Kubernetes-based platform and developer tooling that GitLab engineers use to ship changes safely and reliably. We own core platform capabilities like production cluster lifecycle management, GitOps-based delivery workflows (ArgoCD), infrastructure as code foundations (Terraform modules and standards), and the reliability and observability practices that keep the platform healthy
- We collaborate asynchronously with application and security partners to onboard services, improve self-service workflows, and strengthen controls like RBAC, network policies, and secrets management
- The team's focus is reducing friction for developers while improving consistency, security, and operational confidence as the platform scales
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 capitalise on the recent trend toward rapid digital transformation and remote working. This trend is expected 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: $434.7m
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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