Senior GitLab Engineer

Verda; Helsinki; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Cash and equity compensation

Global team environment

Impactful work with leading engineers

Job summary

Verda is seeking a Senior GitLab Engineer to own our self-managed GitLab and run it as a reliable service for engineering teams. You will collaborate with IT, DevEx and Security to ensure upgrades, backups, security policies, and scalable CI pipelines.

The role combines hands-on administration with design for resilience, continuous improvement, and strong DevOps practices. You’ll work in Helsinki with a hybrid model, three days at the office, contributing to a growing cloud AI infrastructure

Qualifications

• Several years running self-managed GitLab in production, including upgrades, backups, restores and incidents.
• Deep understanding of GitLab components (Rails, Sidekiq, Gitaly, PostgreSQL, Redis, object storage) and failure modes.
• Experience with GitLab reference architectures and HA designs, including trade-offs Linux package vs cloud-native deployments.
• Running GitLab Runner at scale: executors, autoscaling, caching, isolation, and runner security.
• Strong Linux skills and infrastructure as code, with Terraform, Ansible, or Salt, and automation in Bash, Python, or similar.
• Monitoring with Prometheus-compatible tooling and Grafana, or equivalent.
• A service mindset: you see developers as your users and want GitLab to work well for them.

Responsibilities

• Own GitLab end to end: configuration, maintenance, upgrades, troubleshooting, and roadmap.
• Architecture and resilience: design for high availability and performance as Verda grows.
• Backup, recovery, and continuity: automated backups and tested restores with defined targets.
• Shared CI runners: build and run the shared runner fleet and govern custom runners.
• Monitoring and reliability: monitor health, performance, and capacity; lead incident response.
• Safe change: test upgrades/config changes in staging and keep rollback plans.
• Security and access: keep GitLab patched, set up SSO and audit logs.
• Automation and documentation: automate admin work and train backup owners.

Skills

GitLab in prod

GitLab components

HA architectures

GitLab Runner at scale

Linux & IaC

Monitoring & alerting

Service mindset

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Salt

Bash

Python

Prometheus

Grafana

GitLab

Job description

At Verda, we're building a full-stack AI cloud, covering everything from data centers and hardware to our own cloud platform that the world's leading AI teams use to do serious AI work.
We strive to make a positive mark on the world through the infrastructure we build and give leading teams a service they can truly depend on. Headquartered in Helsinki, we operate globally with offices in London and San Francisco.
Join Verda while it’s still being built - not once it’s finished.

Why Verda

• Cash and equity compensation along with local benefits.

• 40+ nationalities, with 6 different ones on the management team.

• A real chance to make an impact and work alongside world class engineers, researchers, and partners across the global AI ecosystem.

About the role

As Senior GitLab Engineer, you'll take ownership of our self-managed GitLab. Almost everything our engineers do runs through it: source code, CI/CD, the container registry, and the tooling that delivers changes into our infrastructure. After that, you'll run it as a service that engineering can rely on as Verda grows.

You'll be part of our IT team and own the GitLab service, while engineering teams own what they build on it and Security sets the security policy. You'll work closely with our DevEx team to make developers' lives easier, and train backup owners in IT, so GitLab never depends on one person.

Your responsibilities

• Own GitLab end to end: Configuration, maintenance, upgrades, troubleshooting, and the roadmap for where GitLab goes next. You will work with teams to decide how the instance is best run, and you are accountable for it running well.

• Architecture and resilience: Design how we run GitLab so it is highly available, performs well, and can recover from failures as Verda grows. This includes capacity planning and scaling decisions.

• Backup, recovery, and continuity: Set up automated backups for repositories, databases, configuration, and secrets, and test restores regularly. Agree recovery targets with the engineering teams and document them in line with Verda's continuity policy.

• Shared CI runners: Build and run the shared CI runner fleet, so teams get fast, reliable pipelines without managing their own infrastructure. Teams that need their own runners, for example for deployments, keep owning them. You set the standard for how those runners connect and work with Security to keep all runners secure.

• Monitoring and operational reliability: Monitor GitLab's health, performance, storage, and capacity, and tune it as usage grows. Set up alerts that are useful, lead incident response and root-cause analysis, and fix problems for the long term rather than just restarting.

• Safe change: Test upgrades, configuration changes, and new features in staging before they reach production. Apply security releases quickly, keep rollback plans tested, and manage configuration as code where possible.

• Security and access: Keep GitLab patched and securely configured, together with Security. Set up SSO, group-based access, and a clear group structure, look after tokens and service accounts, and keep audit logs that show who did what.

• Automation and documentation: Automate admin work with the GitLab APIs and CLI. Write runbooks that someone else can follow under pressure, and train backup owners in IT, so GitLab never depends on one person.

Your key competencies

• Several years running self-managed GitLab in production, including upgrades, backups, restores, and incidents

• Deep understanding of GitLab's components (Rails, Sidekiq, Gitaly, PostgreSQL, Redis, object storage) and how each of them fails

• Experience with GitLab's reference architectures and high-availability (HA) designs, including the trade-offs between Linux package and cloud-native deployments

• Running GitLab Runner at scale: executors, autoscaling, caching, isolation, and runner security

• Strong Linux skills and infrastructure as code, with tools like Terraform, Ansible, or Salt, and automation in Bash, Python, or similar

• Monitoring with Prometheus-compatible tooling and Grafana, or equivalent

• A service mindset: you see developers as your users and want GitLab to work well for them

Nice to have

• Running GitLab on Kubernetes, with Helm and GitOps workflows

• Moving a self-managed GitLab installation between architectures, or consolidating instances

• PostgreSQL operations beyond what GitLab manages for you

• GitLab's security and compliance features, ideally in an ISO 27001, SOC 2, or similar environment

• Connecting self-hosted AI models to GitLab features

• Tuning GitLab performance for large repositories and demanding CI workloads

Practicalities

• Location: Helsinki, Finland or London, UK

• Work mode: Hybrid, three days a week at the office

• Employment type: Full time and permanent

What's next