# Staff Backend Engineer, GitLab Delivery: Upgrades

**Company:** [GitLab](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/gitlab)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Go, Kubernetes, Helm, Kubernetes Operators, Custom Resource Definitions, Admission Controllers, Terraform, Ansible, Postgres, Linux, Systemd, Ruby on Rails, Service Mesh, Observability
**Posted:** 2026-08-10

> Guides architecture and develops backend automation for GitLab’s self-managed deployments, upgrade workflows, and cloud-native infrastructure. The role requires strong Go and Kubernetes experience, familiarity with stateful workloads and PostgreSQL migrations, and the ability to mentor engineers and influence cross-functional technical decisions.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

- Guide the technical vision and architecture for GitLab’s cloud-native, self-managed deployments and upgrade workflows.
- Establish operational maturity standards, service integration patterns, and deployment models that help development teams manage component lifecycles.
- Design and maintain Kubernetes Operators, Helm charts, and upgrade orchestration tooling for self-managed GitLab deployments across varied environments.
- Develop automation and integration frameworks for database migrations, rolling deployments, compatibility checks, and rollback paths.
- Define database and application lifecycle strategies, including safe PostgreSQL migration approaches and validation mechanisms that reduce downtime risk.
- Collaborate with Product Management, Site Reliability Engineering, GitLab Dedicated, and development teams to align deployment patterns with customer needs.
- Mentor engineers and enable customer-facing teams through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and runbooks.
- Drive observability, testing, performance, and resilience practices for self-managed deployments; contribute to incident response and post-incident learning.

## Requirements

- Strong software engineering experience designing and delivering production systems that customers install and operate in their own infrastructure.
- Proficiency in Go for large, complex codebases.
- Hands-on production experience with Kubernetes, including building and maintaining Operators, designing Helm charts for stateful applications, and working with Custom Resource Definitions, admission controllers, and controller patterns.
- Knowledge of cloud-native systems and tooling, including service mesh, observability stacks, infrastructure as code, and automation tools such as Terraform or Ansible.
- Experience with stateful workloads and databases, including PostgreSQL schema design and migrations, persistent volumes, storage classes, and approaches for reducing downtime during upgrades.
- Understanding of Linux systems and production operations, including package management, systemd, system-level debugging, observability, incident response, and on-call participation.
- Ability to guide through influence by writing technical proposals, documenting decisions, mentoring engineers, and working effectively across teams.
- Interest in open-source infrastructure or deployment tooling, or transferable experience from adjacent domains, with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to different audiences.

## Nice to Have

- Familiarity with Ruby on Rails and Rails application architecture.

## Benefits

- Flexible paid time off
- Team member resource groups
- Equity compensation and employee stock purchase plan
- Growth and development fund
- Parental leave

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