Senior Backend Engineer, Gitlab Delivery: Runway (Platform Engineering)

GitLab; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible Paid Time Off

Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Home Office Support

Job summary

GitLab is hiring a Senior Engineer for their Runway team to lead the design and management of Kubernetes-based platforms. Responsibilities include managing production Kubernetes clusters, implementing GitOps workflows, and building reusable Terraform modules. The ideal candidate should have proficiency in Go, hands-on experience with production-grade Kubernetes, and strong communication skills. The role supports flexible work with a focus on developer productivity and operational confidence.

Qualifications

• Experience in writing and maintaining production-grade services and automation tooling.
• Hands-on ownership of production Kubernetes clusters including upgrades and scaling.
• Knowledge in GitOps-based continuous delivery workflows and infrastructure as code.
• Ability to document decisions and tradeoffs clearly for asynchronous teams.

Responsibilities

• Manage Kubernetes clusters and contribute to architectural decisions.
• Implement GitOps workflows and share best practices with teams.
• Build reusable Terraform modules for safe cloud provisioning.
• Lead incident response and post-mortems for improvements.

Skills

Proficiency in Go

Experience with production Kubernetes clusters

GitOps workflows knowledge

Networking fundamentals

Strong communication skills

Tools

Terraform

ArgoCD

Job description

Overview of this role

As a Senior Engineer on the Runway team, you'll lead the design, evolution, and operation of the Kubernetes-based platform and developer tooling that powers GitLab's engineering organization. You'll drive strategic infrastructure initiatives across platform architecture, automation, and developer experience. That includes operating production Kubernetes clusters across cloud environments, scaling our ArgoCD-based GitOps workflows, and setting infrastructure-as-code practices and standards across teams. You'll mentor engineers, influence architectural decisions, and drive platform improvements that enhance reliability, observability, and security controls like RBAC and secrets management. Your work will establish clear patterns that make it easier for application teams to adopt modern practices and ship with confidence.

Some Examples Of Our Projects

• Evolve ArgoCD GitOps standards across environments (Application Sets, sync policies, and deployment guardrails)
• Build reusable Terraform modules and practices for safe, repeatable cloud infrastructure provisioning and drift detection

What you'll do

• Manage and evolve production-grade Kubernetes clusters across cloud environments, contributing to architectural decisions on upgrades, scaling, disaster recovery, and reliability improvements.
• Implement and maintain GitOps workflows using ArgoCD, including Application Sets, sync policies, and deployment standards, and share best practices with teams adopting these patterns.
• Build and maintain reusable Terraform modules that enable safe, repeatable cloud infrastructure provisioning, including state management and drift detection practices.
• Lead incident response, drive post-mortems to clear conclusions, and implement improvements to availability, performance, and resilience as part of on‑call rotation.
• Partner with application teams to onboard services onto the platform, writing documentation, runbooks, and self‑service tooling that improves developer productivity.
• Implement security controls such as RBAC, network policies, and secrets management that meet compliance requirements.
• Contribute to CI pipeline integrations as part of end‑to‑end delivery workflows.

What you'll bring

• Proficiency in Go for writing and maintaining production‑grade services and automation tooling, with the ability to guide others on best practices and code quality. Python or Bash experience is a plus.
• Hands‑on experience owning production Kubernetes clusters across one or more cloud environments (for example, Amazon EKS, Google GKE, or Azure AKS), including upgrades, scaling, disaster recovery, and reliability engineering.
• Experience designing and operating GitOps‑based continuous delivery workflows (for example, ArgoCD or Flux) and infrastructure as code (Terraform or equivalent), including reusable modules and safe infrastructure provisioning practices.
• Solid understanding of networking fundamentals (DNS, load balancing, ingress) and the ability to reason through failure modes and design tradeoffs, not just apply familiar patterns.
• Ability to deliver well‑structured, independently driven work, including clear documentation of decisions, tradeoffs, and future considerations, in support of a team that operates asynchronously across time zones.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to write system documentation, establish runbooks, and share knowledge in ways that help the broader team move faster and get unblocked quickly.

About The Team

The Runway team builds and operates the Kubernetes‑based platform and developer tooling that GitLab engineers use to ship changes safely and reliably. We own core platform capabilities like production cluster lifecycle management, GitOps‑based delivery workflows (ArgoCD), infrastructure as code foundations (Terraform modules and standards), and the reliability and observability practices that keep the platform healthy. We collaborate asynchronously with application and security partners to onboard services, improve self‑service workflows, and strengthen controls like RBAC, network policies, and secrets management. The team's focus is reducing friction for developers while improving consistency, security, and operational confidence as the platform scales.

Benefits

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well‑being
• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental Leave
• Home Office Support

Equal Opportunity Employment

GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.