Senior Backend Engineer - Ruby (Remote, Scalable APIs)

GitLab; United States; On-site; USD 139,000 - 235,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits and well-being

Flexible Paid Time Off

Team Member Resource Groups

Equity Compensation & Employee Stock 8

Growth and Development Fund

Parental Leave

Job summary

GitLab is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for the Portfolio Experience team. You will translate user needs into backend features, working with product, users, and open source contributors.

The role centers on evolving the work items platform to serve millions of items across many groups and projects. You will guide backend architecture, with emphasis on GraphQL/REST APIs, performance, and observability, while mentoring engineers and contributing to a collaborative, async-first environment.

Qualifications

• Experience representing the user perspective while collaborating with product and users.
• Experience leading projects with multiple engineers over months and mentoring others.
• Full stack experience with backend focus; proficient in Ruby and Rails; understanding modern frontend concepts.
• Strong PostgreSQL skills; performance optimization, indexing, partitioning.
• Experience designing/evolving GraphQL and RESTful APIs with scalable contracts.
• Experience improving large automated test suites and test reliability.
• Strong written and verbal communication in asynchronous, distributed environments.
• Experience integrating AI into development workflows or working with Elasticsearch/ClickHouse/Python is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product and engineers to shape requirements and break projects into shippable iterations.
• Design and implement backend and real-time features in the GitLab monolith (GraphQL/REST) with focus on performance and reliability.
• Build and evolve portfolio planning capabilities (work item hierarchy, status rollup, capacity planning).
• Improve PostgreSQL performance at scale; optimize queries; move workloads to Elasticsearch/ClickHouse as needed.
• Create proofs of concept, maintain automated tests, and support safe rollouts with feature flags and observability.
• Mentor engineers and open source contributors through code reviews and pairing; lead knowledge sharing.
• Participate in on-call rotations, troubleshoot production issues, and contribute to RCAs and process improvements.

Skills

Ruby

Ruby on Rails

PostgreSQL

GraphQL

RESTful APIs

API design

Automated testing

AI in workflows

Tools

Elasticsearch

ClickHouse

Python

Job description

GitLab is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for the Portfolio Experience team. You will translate user needs into backend features, working with product, users, and open source contributors.

The role centers on evolving the work items platform to serve millions of items across many groups and projects. You will guide backend architecture, with emphasis on GraphQL/REST APIs, performance, and observability, while mentoring engineers and contributing to a collaborative, async-first environment.