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GitLab · 2 months ago

Principal Database Engineer, Data Engineering & Monetization

United States

Full-time

Remote

Lead/Staff

$158K/yr - $338K/yr

GitLab is an open-core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. As a Principal Database Engineer, you'll architect the data platform foundation for GitLab, focusing on scalable solutions and proactive database health frameworks to support enterprise-scale growth.

Cloud SecurityDeveloper ToolsDevOpsOpen SourceSaaS

Comp. & Benefits

Responsibilities

Lead database architecture and strategy for GitLab.com's PostgreSQL infrastructure, designing scalable solutions that support hundreds of thousands of concurrent users while ensuring reliability, performance, and long-term growth planning

Build proactive database health and reliability frameworks that prevent incidents and customer escalations through continuous monitoring, automated remediation, and predictive analytics that surface issues before they impact users

Drive database excellence across engineering teams by establishing best practices, providing expert guidance on migrations and query optimization, and building self-service tools and guardrails that enable teams to succeed while maintaining database health

Own end-to-end observability and operational excellence by designing symptom-based monitoring systems, leading incident mitigation efforts, and transforming learnings into automated, repeatable processes that eliminate recurring issues

Shape GitLab's database platform evolution by evaluating and implementing modern database technologies and data stores, influencing organizational adoption through evidence-based recommendations and hands-on solutions that improve both product capabilities and production stability

Bring a multi-platform mindset by designing and evaluating solutions that will help scale both GitLab.com and be manageable for our self managed customers

Build partnerships between product and infrastructure teams to ensure that product and team decisions align with the infrastructure team’s priorities

Break down long-term goals into incremental, actionable steps that deliver customer value

Spend time in the codebase to maintain technical credibility and team empathy

Ship working solutions to customers over creating presentations or theoretical designs

Provide strategic context and leadership while leveraging domain expertise from peers across projects

Deep-dive into critical technical problems for extended periods when needed

Qualification

PostgreSQL architectureDistributed systemsDatabase reliability frameworksInfrastructure-as-codeQuery optimizationAutomated failoverMonitoring systemsCollaborationTechnical leadershipProblem-solving

Required

Experience architecting, operating, and optimizing PostgreSQL in large-scale distributed systems with high availability and disaster recovery requirements

Deep understanding of PostgreSQL internals including query planner, WAL mechanics, vacuum processes, and storage engine optimization

Proven track record designing and maintaining highly distributed production database environments with automated failover, monitoring, and self-healing capabilities

Strong advocate for infrastructure-as-code, GitOps practices, security hardening, and SRE principles in database operations

Proven ability to debug across the full stack, from low-level systems (Postgres, Elasticsearch source code) to frontend (TypeScript)

Strong hands-on coding skills with experience balancing strategic leadership and technical execution

Track record of delivering results through collaboration with technical experts

You have strong, well-informed opinions on database technologies and data stores backed by factual evidence, and can effectively influence the organization to adopt modern data stack solutions