Senior Backend Engineer

Role overview

Join GitLab as a Senior Backend Engineer on the Runway team. You will lead the design, evolution, and operation of GitLab’s Kubernetes-based platform and developer tooling, driving infrastructure initiatives and improving reliability, observability, and security.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, evolution, and operation of the Kubernetes-based platform and developer tooling powering GitLab engineering.
• Drive platform infrastructure initiatives across architecture, automation, and developer experience, including:
  • Operating production Kubernetes clusters
  • Scaling GitOps workflows
• Mentor engineers and influence architectural decisions.
• Improve platform outcomes including reliability, observability, and security controls.
• Communicate effectively by producing system documentation, creating runbooks, and sharing knowledge.

Requirements

• Strong networking fundamentals (e.g., DNS, load balancing, ingress) with ability to reason about failure modes and tradeoffs.
• Proficiency in Go for production-grade services and automation tooling; ability to guide others on best practices and code quality.
• Hands-on experience owning production Kubernetes clusters across one or more cloud environments (e.g., AWS EKS, Google GKE, Azure AKS), including upgrades, scaling, disaster recovery, and reliability engineering.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including system documentation and runbooks.
• Experience with GitOps continuous delivery workflows (e.g., Argo CD or Flux) and Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform) with safe provisioning practices.
• Ability to deliver independently in an asynchronous, multi-timezone environment; document decisions and tradeoffs.

Nice-to-haves

• Python or Bash experience.