Staff Backend Engineer, AI-First Performance Enablement

GitLab Inc.; Poland; Remote; PLN 300,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

GitLab Inc. is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer for the Performance Enablement group to define and build the self-serve platform that helps GitLab teams run performance tests, analyze results, and track trends across the development lifecycle.

This hands-on leadership role shapes a multi-quarter vision and guides internal tooling adoption. You’ll mentor engineers, build scalable testing capabilities, and push AI-first development practices across teams while collaborating with cross-functional

Qualifications

• Staff-level backend or platform engineering experience with leadership.
• Proven track record building performance testing or analysis systems.
• Ability to define a multi-quarter technical strategy with engineering leadership.

Responsibilities

• Define the team's technical vision and multi-quarter roadmap with the Engineering Manager, identify opportunities for impact across R&D, and advocate for technical priorities with stakeholders.
• Design and build reusable platform capabilities for performance testing, analysis, reporting, and trend visibility, solving complex technical problems and shipping large capabilities with minimal guidance.
• Turn lessons from early team engagements into reusable capabilities, documentation, and onboarding, measured by each new team needing less hands-on support than the last until teams can adopt the platform and manage their performance independently.
• Coordinate with peer teams across Developer Experience, Infrastructure Platforms, and product groups to align priorities and timing.
• Lead AI-first development practices in how we build and what we ship, including AI skills and agent-assisted performance workflows.
• Mentor engineers in performance engineering, platform design, and technical decision-making.
• Serve as a performance expert for other teams and provide technical guidance on initiatives spanning multiple groups.
• Take part in on-call or operational support where your team's ownership model requires it.

Skills

Backend engineering

Platform engineering

Technical leadership

Performance enablement

AI-first development

K6 load testing

Kubernetes

AWS / GCP

Tools

k6

Kubernetes

AWS

Google Cloud Platform

Job description

GitLab Inc. is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer for the Performance Enablement group to define and build the self-serve platform that helps GitLab teams run performance tests, analyze results, and track trends across the development lifecycle.

This hands-on leadership role shapes a multi-quarter vision and guides internal tooling adoption. You’ll mentor engineers, build scalable testing capabilities, and push AI-first development practices across teams while collaborating with cross-functional