Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), Plan: Portfolio Experience

Far Coder; Canada; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

GitLab is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer for the Portfolio Experience team. You will be an experienced backend engineer who shapes features with product and users, bringing full-stack insight with a backend focus.

You will help evolve the architecture powering the work items platform used across thousands of groups and projects. The role emphasizes backend and real-time capabilities using GraphQL, RESTful APIs, PostgreSQL, and Elasticsearch, with Ruby as a primary language and Python/Rust as

Qualifications

• Strong backend engineering experience with scalable systems.
• Proficiency in Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, PostgreSQL.
• Experience with search and data indexing using Elasticsearch.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product and engineers to shape requirements and break work into iterations.
• Design and implement backend APIs (GraphQL/REST) with a focus on performance and reliability.
• Build and evolve portfolio planning features and data models powering work items across groups/projects.
• Improve database performance and optimize queries for scale.

Skills

GraphQL

PostgreSQL

Elasticsearch

Ruby

Rails

Python

Rust

Job description

GitLab is hiring a remote candidate for Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), Plan: Portfolio Experience. This is a full time position. Work location: Canada. The role typically involves technologies such as GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Rails, Python, Rust. GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster. The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, with all team members expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact. GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Our high-performance culture is driven by our values and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. Co-create the future with us as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software. * Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

An overview of this role

We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for GitLab's Portfolio Experience team . You'll be an experienced product engineer who incorporates user needs into feature decisions and brings full stack experience, with a current focus on backend. You'll spend as much time understanding user needs and shaping how features should work as you do building them, working directly with product, users, and open source contributors. You'll help evolve the backend architecture that powers the work items platform, which must serve millions of work items in a single user's view across tens of thousands of groups and projects.

What you’ll do

• Collaborate with product and other engineers to shape requirements, understand user needs, and break complex projects into shippable iterations.
• Design and implement backend and real-time features in the GitLab monolith, including GraphQL and RESTful APIs and subscriptions, with a focus on performance, reliability, and user impact.
• Build and evolve portfolio planning capabilities, including work item hierarchy, status rollup, and capacity planning.
• Improve PostgreSQL performance at scale through query and write optimization, indexing, denormalization, partitioning, and moving suitable workloads to Elasticsearch or ClickHouse.
• Create proofs of concept for complex work, maintain extensive automated test coverage, and support safe rollouts with feature flags and strong observ