Intermediate Backend Engineer, AMER New Remote, Canada; Remote, United States

GitLab Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

GitLab is seeking an Intermediate Backend Engineer to take features from idea to shipping and post-production follow-up. You will work with Product, Frontend, Infrastructure, and Security to improve backend code, services, and APIs.

You will operate in a remote, asynchronous environment with senior engineers who review and guide your work. You’ll design and ship production-ready backend features using Ruby/Rails, Go, or other modern languages, while focusing on security, observability, and

Qualifications

• Production backend experience with Ruby/Rails or Go.
• Ability to ship features with minimal guidance.
• Strong API, database, testing, and performance fundamentals.
• Experience with asynchronous, remote collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Own and ship backend features and improvements with minimal guidance.
• Design, implement, test, and ship APIs, background jobs, and services.
• Improve automated coverage: unit, integration, contract, end-to-end tests.
• Investigate and fix production issues, support on-call responsibilities.

Skills

Backend basics

API design

Go

Ruby/Rails

Security awareness

AI fluency

Tools

PostgreSQL

gRPC

Rust

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 an Intermediate Backend Engineer, you will take backend features and improvements from clarifying the problem through shipping them and following up in production. You will work within a product area, partnering with Product Management, Frontend, Infrastructure, and Security to deliver predictably and contribute to the quality, security, performance, and maintainability of shared backend code and services. You will be trusted to work with minimal guidance, to know when to seek help, and to communicate clearly in a remote, asynchronous environment — with other tenured engineers alongside you to review your work, think through hard problems with you, and help you grow.

Why you’ll love this role

• Ownership: You'll take features from requirements through delivery and follow-up; your code will run on a platform used by millions of users.
• Learning and Growth : You’ll work alongside your engineering team, who treat code review and design review as a learning loop rather than a gate — one of the fastest ways to grow your engineering judgment.
• Innovative Culture: You’ll use AI as a genuine part of daily engineering work, developing the judgment to know when to trust it and when not to.
• Autonomy: You’ll 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, so you understand why you’re building something, not just what.

What you’ll do

• Own and Ship Features: Design, implement, test, and ship backend features and improvements with minimal guidance, working in Ruby/Rails, Go, or any other modern languages.
• Build for Production: Write maintainable, secure, observable, and performant code. Design and maintain APIs, background jobs, integrations, and bounded service functionality, and work with data models, migrations, indexes, and query behavior.
• Test and Review: Add and improve automated coverage — unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end where appropriate — and review others’ code for correctness, maintainability, security, performance, and operational risk.
• Operate What You Build: Investigate build, test, deployment, and runtime failures at the feature boundary, identify technical debt and propose practical improvements, and take part in on-call or operational support where your team’s ownership model requires it.
• Leverage AI: Use AI productively in daily work, validate what it produces, and understand where its limitations matter.

What you’ll bring

• Backend Fundamentals: Professional experience building and shipping production backend applications, with strong programming, API, database, testing, debugging, and performance fundamentals.
• Adaptability: Experience with Ruby/Rails, Go, or any other modern backend language. We value the ability to learn and adapt over mastery of a single language.
• Feature Ownership: The ability to take a feature from clarification through delivery and follow-up, working independently while seeking input at the right time.
• Practical Judgment: Sound instincts about security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and operational risk, plus an understanding of modular backend boundaries and the consequences of coupling.
• Clear Communication: Strong written communication and effective collaboration in a remote, asynchronous environment.
• AI Fluency: Practical experience with AI coding tools, including the ability to review and correct what they generate.

Helpful experience

• Production Go services, APIs, concurrency, profiling, or gRPC.
• Rust, particularly for systems, security, performance, or platform work.
• PostgreSQL, schema evolution, caching, queues, messaging, or event-driven workflows.
• Observability using metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerts.
• Contributing to a modular monolith, bounded context, shared component, or independently operated service.

*The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. See more information on our benefits and equity . Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and 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 requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.

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.