Staff Backend Engineer (Ruby on Rails/AI)

GitLab's Verify stage is dedicated to fostering collaboration, iteration, and enabling users to run fast, reliable, and scalable Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines for projects of all sizes. The team focuses on helping users, from small teams to large enterprises, achieve efficient CI/CD. The company operates globally with a remote-first culture.

Introduction

As a Staff Backend Engineer (AI) in the Verify stage at GitLab, you will play a central role in shaping and scaling the core infrastructure behind GitLab CI. This position focuses on integrating AI into CI/CD workflows, significantly impacting performance, reliability, and usability for millions of CI jobs. You will define how GitLab designs, builds, and iterates on AI-assisted and agentic CI experiences, setting standards for the AI agent portfolio and responsibly integrating GitLab's Duo Agent Platform into CI workflows.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Engineering, Product, and UX leadership to evaluate priorities, identify areas for accelerated development, address data gaps, and uncover innovation opportunities.
• Define success metrics for the AI agent portfolio and ensure progress tracking to foster continuous learning.
• Analyze the competitive landscape to maintain GitLab CI's best-in-class status in an evolving, agentic environment.
• Shape and scale GitLab CI backend infrastructure to enhance performance, reliability, and usability for high-volume users.
• Design and implement AI-powered features for Agentic CI, including agents, agentic flows, and LLM-backed tools integrated with GitLab's Duo Agent Platform.
• Establish success criteria, baselines, measurable outcomes, and clear signals for AI in CI before development to facilitate informed iteration.
• Develop instrumentation and observability features for AI-assisted CI trustworthiness in production, including feature behavior metrics, dashboards, and safeguards.
• Drive measurable performance improvements across CI systems (e.g., database access, background processing, job orchestration) through hypothesis formulation, experimentation, and data validation.
• Write secure, well-tested, and maintainable Ruby on Rails code within a large monolith, enhancing features while reducing technical debt and operational risk.
• Lead cross-functional technical initiatives with Product, UX, and Infrastructure, influencing architecture and execution across the Verify stage.
• Share standards, patterns, and insights to elevate responsible AI integration and evidence-driven engineering across CI.

Requirements

• Advanced proficiency with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, with experience in building and maintaining reliable backend services in a large codebase.
• Strong PostgreSQL skills, including data modeling, query tuning, and scaling large tables through proactive performance investigation.
• Hands-on experience building, running, and debugging high-traffic production systems in CI, workflow orchestration, or similar infrastructure-heavy domains.
• Practical experience in designing and shipping AI-powered backend features and integrations, with sound judgment regarding large language model limitations and responsible production use.
• A data-driven engineering approach: defining hypotheses, establishing baseline metrics, instrumenting changes, and measuring outcomes against clear success criteria.
• Familiarity with observability patterns and tools (metrics, logging, tracing) for diagnosing issues, improving reliability, and guiding iteration.
• Strong backend architecture and delivery practices, including secure design, well-tested code, and strategies for safe rollouts and zero-downtime changes.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including technical proposal writing, documentation, and effective collaboration in a remote, asynchronous, cross-functional environment.

About Company

GitLab's Verify stage is dedicated to fostering collaboration, iteration, and enabling users to run fast, reliable, and scalable Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines for projects of all sizes. The team focuses on helping users, from small teams to large enterprises, achieve efficient CI/CD. The company operates globally with a remote-first culture.