Staff Backend Engineer - Developer Experience (Ruby)

An overview of this role As a Staff Backend Engineer in the Developer Experience group you’ll work cross-functionally to help us identify and improve the engineering experience across GitLab’s internal engineering teams. We’re at a pivotal time in transforming our testing approach and development experience to enable engineers to deliver high-quality code efficiently and with confidence.

About the team

Our Developer Experience group currently has six globally distributed teams of Backend Engineers and Software Engineers in Test. In this role you’ll work across our entire group to identify and remove the biggest points of friction that affect development at GitLab. You’ll split your time between hands-on coding in Ruby and Go designing scalable solutions and helping every team deliver. You’ll also be instrumental in shaping our engineering culture across GitLab.

This is a highly visible role with strong company-wide support. You’ll be instrumental in shifting our culture and practices toward a cohesive Developer Experience Platform strategy backed by buy-in and appetite for change.

What you’ll do

• Drive Technical Excellence Across Teams : Provide hands-on engineering contributions and technical leadership across six Developer Experience teams jumping in to unblock critical work or accelerate high-impact initiatives.

• Champion Engineering Needs : Partner with engineering teams across GitLab to identify pain points gather feedback and translate day-to-day frustrations into actionable improvements for the Developer Experience roadmap.

• Transform Testing at Scale : Help us modernize our testing to support GitLab's growth and ensure engineers have fast reliable tools that catch issues early without slowing them down.

• Optimize CI/CD Pipelines : Reduce merge and CI friction by building workflows that deliver fast actionable feedback and help engineers iterate confidently and ship faster.

• Break Down Systemic Bottlenecks : Collaborate with Platform Product and Infrastructure teams to identify and eliminate the architectural and process friction that slows down development.

• Shape Engineering Culture : Foster a culture of continuous learning inclusion and improvement where great developer experience is a shared value across the organization.

What you’ll bring

• Deep experience with developer tooling DevEx strategies and testing frameworks at scale.

• Experience leading platform or transformation initiatives across multiple teams.

• Proven ability to influence without authority and collaborate across functions.

• Familiarity with DevOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills in a remote-first environment.

• A product mindset with a passion for empowering developers.

• Alignment with GitLab values especially collaboration iteration and transparency.