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GitLab · 5 days ago

Staff Engineer, GitLab Delivery - Operate

United States

Full-time

Remote

Lead/Staff

GitLab is an open-core software company that develops a comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, aiming to enable collaboration among users. The Staff Engineer on the GitLab Operate team will lead the technical direction for self-managed deployment strategies, focusing on reliability and operational excellence, while mentoring engineers and collaborating with various teams to enhance deployment practices.

Cloud SecurityDeveloper ToolsDevOpsOpen SourceSaaS

Comp. & Benefits

Responsibilities

Lead the technical vision and architecture for GitLab's cloud-native, self-managed deployments and zero-downtime upgrades, focusing on reliability, simplicity, and operational excellence at scale

Establish and champion operational maturity standards, service integration patterns, and deployment models so development teams can own the end-to-end lifecycle of their components with reduced upgrade risk

Design, implement, and maintain production-grade Kubernetes Operators, Helm charts, and upgrade orchestration tooling that automate lifecycle management for self-managed GitLab deployments across a range of environments

Develop integration and automation frameworks that handle database migrations, rolling deployments, compatibility checks, and rollbacks to enable predictable, repeatable release outcomes for product teams

Define and evolve database and application lifecycle strategies, including safe PostgreSQL migrations, compatibility layers, and validation checks, to minimize downtime, failed upgrades, and rollbacks

Collaborate with Product Management, GitLab.com Site Reliability Engineering, GitLab Dedicated, and development teams to align deployment patterns, operational practices, and self-managed customer needs

Mentor and support engineers and customer-facing teams through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and runbooks that improve deployment reliability, supportability, and customer success

Define and implement observability, testing, performance, and resilience practices for self-managed deployments, and contribute to incident response and post-mortems to continually improve reliability and mean time to recovery

Qualification

Software engineeringKubernetesGo programmingDatabase managementCloud-native architectureHelm chartsPostgreSQLLinux systemsOpen source experienceTechnical leadershipMentoringDocumentation skills

Required

Strong software engineering background with experience designing and delivering production systems that customers install and operate in their own infrastructure

Proficiency in Go for large, complex codebases, with familiarity with Ruby on Rails and Rails application architecture as a plus

Hands-on experience operating Kubernetes in production, including building and maintaining Operators, designing Helm charts for complex stateful applications, and working with Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), admission controllers, and controller patterns

Knowledge of cloud-native architectures and tooling, such as service mesh, observability stacks, infrastructure as code, and infrastructure automation tools like Terraform or Ansible

Experience with stateful workloads and databases, including PostgreSQL schema design and migrations, persistent volumes, storage classes, and strategies for minimizing downtime during upgrades

Understanding of Linux systems and production operations, including package management, systemd, system-level debugging, observability practices, incident response, and on-call participation

Ability to provide technical leadership across teams, including writing clear technical proposals and documentation, mentoring engineers, and influencing without direct authority

Interest in or experience with open source infrastructure or deployment tooling, and the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, with openness to candidates who bring relevant, transferable skills from adjacent domains