# Forward Deployed Engineer

**Company:** [GitLab](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/gitlab)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Solutions Architecture
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Ruby on Rails, Go, ai governance, Git, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Docker, Postgres, Redis, Vue, TypeScript, git internals, DevSecOps
**Posted:** 2026-07-16

> Staff Forward Deployed Engineer partnering with strategic customers to diagnose complex issues, contribute production code to GitLab (Ruby/Rails or Go), drive AI/agentic SDLC adoption, and turn learnings into product improvements and thought leadership. Requires staff-level product engineering experience and deep DevSecOps expertise.

## Job Description

## What you’ll do

### Product contribution
- 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.

### Strategic technical stewardship
- 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.

### AI adoption and agentic software development lifecycle
- 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.

### Thought leadership
- 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.

## What you’ll bring
- 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.

## Strongly preferred qualifications
- Direct experience with GitLab as a platform, including GitLab.com, GitLab Dedicated, or GitLab Self-Managed.
- Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability tools.
- Deep familiarity with Git internals, repository performance, large-scale Git usage patterns, or GitLab Runner behavior.
- Experience creating technical thought-leadership materials, such as whitepapers, technical talks, architecture frameworks, requests for comments, public...

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/184e7375-67f7-4316-8a53-9f6e8640e2cd
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/184e7375-67f7-4316-8a53-9f6e8640e2cd