Senior Platform Engineer (Golang), Software Supply Chain Security: Authentication

At GitLab, the Authentication team is part of the Software Supply Chain Security group. Their mission is to build and maintain the core authentication and authorization infrastructure for all GitLab deployment models, empowering system administrators to balance security and accessibility. The team ensures a smooth initial authentication experience while making identity services secure, flexible, and scalable. They operate as a small, distributed team, collaborating asynchronously across time zones with various other teams to support GitLab’s shift towards microservices and zero-trust networking. Current focus areas include high-scale authentication performance, secure service-to-service communication, and supporting complex environments like GitLab.com, self-managed, Dedicated, and air-gapped deployments.

Introduction

As a Senior Platform Engineer on the Authentication team at GitLab, you will be instrumental in building the critical infrastructure layer responsible for authentication and authorization across all GitLab environments (GitLab.com, self-managed, Dedicated, and air-gapped). This role focuses on delivering secure, performant, and reliable identity services, contributing to GitLab’s zero-trust architecture and microservices evolution. You will collaborate closely with other teams to design and implement key components and enhance observability for distributed authentication systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement core components of GitLab's authentication infrastructure, including Envoy proxy configuration, token services, and policy decision systems.
• Develop solutions for critical infrastructure challenges such as bi-directional gRPC tunnels, mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS), and service mesh architecture.
• Build and maintain authentication infrastructure supporting various GitLab deployment models.
• Optimize the performance and reliability of authentication and authorization decisions at scale across distributed systems.
• Implement and refine monitoring, observability, and debugging capabilities for authentication services.
• Collaborate with Authentication, Authorization, Platform, and Infrastructure teams to align infrastructure capabilities with product and architectural requirements.
• Contribute to the team’s technical direction and roadmap for secure, scalable authentication, including standards for style, maintainability, and best practices.
• Represent GitLab and its values through public communication, broader initiatives, and contributions to relevant open-source projects.

Requirements

• Strong experience building and deploying high-performance backend services, ideally in large-scale, distributed environments.
• Hands-on experience with proxy and edge technologies such as Envoy, Traefik, HAProxy, or Nginx, including configuration and operation in production.
• Practical experience with service mesh architectures, mutual TLS (mTLS), zero-trust networking, and secure service-to-service communication patterns (gRPC, REST).
• Working knowledge of database and storage technologies such as RDS, Google Spanner, Postgres or similar, including schema design and performance considerations.
• Experience with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and cloud-native deployment patterns, including observability, monitoring, and debugging of distributed systems.
• Ability to own projects from concept to production, including proposing designs, driving discussions, and delivering in a highly agile, iterative environment.
• Effective written and verbal communication in English, with a collaborative, solution-oriented mindset and openness to learning from and supporting team members.

About Company

At GitLab, the Authentication team is part of the Software Supply Chain Security group. Their mission is to build and maintain the core authentication and authorization infrastructure for all GitLab deployment models, empowering system administrators to balance security and accessibility. The team ensures a smooth initial authentication experience while making identity services secure, flexible, and scalable. They operate as a small, distributed team, collaborating asynchronously across time zones with various other teams to support GitLab’s shift towards microservices and zero-trust networking. Current focus areas include high-scale authentication performance, secure service-to-service communication, and supporting complex environments like GitLab.com, self-managed, Dedicated, and air-gapped deployments.