Senior Backend Engineer New Remote, Poland; Remote, United Kingdom

GitLab Inc.; Warszawa; Remote; PLN 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-friendly culture

Career development support

Flexible work hours

Job summary

GitLab Inc. is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to design, implement, and evolve product capabilities at scale.

You will influence architectural direction, ship moderate to complex backend features, and collaborate across product, frontend, infrastructure, data, and security boundaries. You’ll mentor engineers, uphold high standards for security and performance, and explore agentic AI integration in production workflows.

Qualifications

• Strong command of backend architecture, APIs, and data systems.
• Experience with high-scale distributed systems and performance tuning.
• Ability to mentor engineers and drive architectural decisions.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship backend features with minimal guidance.
• Define and uphold backend standards for quality, security, and reliability.
• Mentor associate and intermediate engineers and remove blockers.
• Diagnose and prevent performance/reliability issues at scale.
• Integrate AI in production engineering workflows and coach others.

Skills

Backend architecture

APIs

Performance tuning

Distributed systems

Mentorship

AI integration

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science

MS preferred

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Cloud platforms

Job description

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 valuesand 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.

About the role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design, implement, and evolve product capabilities while solving high-scope backend problems and influencing the technical and product direction of our teams. You will move beyond "assigned work" to actively improve the quality, reliability, and performance of our systems. You will work across product, frontend, infrastructure, data, and security boundaries, making sound architectural trade-offs, communicating complex ideas clearly in an asynchronous environment, and helping define the standards for a high-scale, global product.

Why you’ll love this role

• High Impact: You aren't just shipping features; you are shaping the architecture of a global platform used by millions.
• Technical Agency: You will influence team objectives, technical direction, and long-range goals, helping us solve problems of high scope and complexity.
• Innovative Culture: You will get to experiment with and integrate agentic AI into production engineering workflows, moving beyond simple prompt engineering to build resilient, AI-assisted systems.
• Autonomy: You will thrive in our remote-first, asynchronous organization, where clear written communication and self-direction are the pillars of success.
• User-Centric Collaboration: You’ll partner closely with PMs and designers to shape requirements, ensuring every technical decision delivers genuine value to our users.

What you’ll do

• Drive Technical Direction: Design and ship moderate to complex backend features with minimal guidance, making pragmatic choices between modular-monolith code, shared components, or independently operated services.
• Raise the Bar: Advocate for product quality, security, availability, and performance. You will define backend standards for style, maintainability, testing, APIs, and operational readiness.
• Mentor & Lead: Mentor associate and intermediate engineers, remove technical blockers, and improve team delivery practices through code and design reviews.
• Operational Excellence: Diagnose and prevent performance/reliability issues at scale. Participate in incident response and act as a technical owner where appropriate.
• AI Integration: Use AI in production engineering work to improve outcomes, evaluate its effectiveness, and coach others on responsible, high-judgment use.

What you’ll bring

• Deep Backend Expertise: A strong command of backend architecture, APIs, data systems, and performance tuning in a complex product or service environment.
• Adaptability: Proficiency in modern backend languages and a deep understanding of systems programming. We value the ability to learn and adapt over mastery of a single language.
• Architectural Judgment: Experience designing or evolving modular backend boundaries, bounded contexts, and migration-safe architectures.
• Influence: Ability to lead through influence, technical judgment, and clear written communication, effectively bridging the gap between product needs and technical reality.
• Agentic AI Expertise: Proven experience building or operating agentic systems in production—moving beyond prompt engineering to architecting loops, tool-use, and error-handling strategies that ensure reliability at scale.

Helpful experience (These are signals, not hard requirements)

• Experience with high-throughput distributed systems, concurrency, or profiling.
• Hands-on experience with containerized production operations (e.g., Kubernetes).
• Background in large-scale modular monoliths or event-driven systems.
• Public technical communication, open-source maintenance, or experience in developer-focused SaaS.

Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.

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 alsoGitLab’s EEO Policy andEEO is the Law . If you have a disability or special need that requiresaccommodation , please let us know during therecruiting process .