Senior Backend Engineer - Agentic AI Integration

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, trusted by over 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100 to ship software faster and more securely.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design, implement, and evolve core product capabilities while solving high-scope backend challenges across GitLab’s global DevSecOps platform. Moving beyond feature delivery, you will actively drive the technical direction of your team, architecting migration-safe bounded contexts across modular-monolith and microservice boundaries. Additionally, you will pioneer production-grade agentic AI systems, building resilient loops, tool-use interfaces, and error-handling strategies that integrate AI directly into developer engineering workflows.

Key Responsibilities

• Backend Architecture & Technical Direction: Design and ship moderate to complex backend features with high autonomy, making pragmatic trade-offs between modular-monolith code, shared service components, and independent microservices.
• Agentic AI Engineering: Build and operate production-grade agentic AI systems—moving beyond prompt engineering to architect autonomous loops, tool-use execution, and fallback strategies for engineering workflows.
• Engineering Standards & Quality: Advocate for system availability, performance, and security. Define backend standards for code style, API design, testing methodologies, and operational readiness.
• Operational Excellence & Scaling: Diagnose and prevent performance and reliability bottlenecks at massive scale; participate in incident response and act as technical owner for core domain services.
• Mentorship & Technical Leadership: Mentor associate and intermediate software engineers, conduct code/design reviews, and unblock team delivery through clear asynchronous technical documentation.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate with Product Managers, Designers, Data Engineers, and Infrastructure leads to translate complex platform needs into resilient technical plans.

Requirements

Software Architecture & Systems Depth

• Backend Architecture Expertise: Strong command of backend systems architecture, API design, database systems, and low-level performance tuning in a high-scale product environment.
• Language & Systems Adaptability: Proficiency in modern backend programming languages (e.g., Ruby, Go, Python, or C++) paired with deep systems programming fundamentals and a proven ability to pick up new tech stacks rapidly.
• Architectural Judgment: Practical experience designing, splitting, or evolving modular backend boundaries, domain-driven bounded contexts, and migration-safe schemas.
• Production Agentic AI Experience: Proven experience building, deploying, or operating agentic AI systems in production—architecting autonomous execution loops, tool-use orchestration, and robust error-handling strategies.
• Asynchronous Leadership: Outstanding written and spoken communication skills to lead through influence and technical reasoning within a fully remote, asynchronous work culture.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with high-volume Ruby on Rails modular monoliths or Go microservices.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps workflows, CI/CD pipelines, container registries, or git-based platform infrastructure.
• Experience with AI evaluation frameworks, LLM observability, or agent sandboxing environments.

Total Rewards & Benefits

• Compensation & Equity: US base salary range of $139,200 – $174,000 USD + equity compensation package + Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
• Flexibility & Remote Culture: All-remote, asynchronous work environment with Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO) and paid parental leave.
• Professional Growth: Dedicated Growth and Development Fund for continuous learning, certifications, and industry events.
• Well-Being & Support: Team Member Resource Groups (TMRGs), health/wellness coverage, and home office setup stipends.