Senior Backend Engineer, Create: Code Creation (EMEA)

An overview of this role

The Create:Code Creations team builds AI-powered tools that suggest intelligent code to developers, enhancing their efficiency, and enabling outstanding software. We are expanding our generative AI capabilities to build APIs integrating large language models (LLMs). This team balances backend engineering, prompt engineering, and creative approaches to new challenges.

As a Senior Engineer, your journey involves diving deep into our cutting-edge codebase and crafting solutions that redefine the future of collaborative development. Your expertise in programming languages and technologies will shine as you actively participate in code reviews, mentoring junior engineers to foster a culture of continuous improvement. Take ownership of features, collaborating with cross-functional teams to transform requirements into robust solutions. Your technical leadership will guide the team in making strategic decisions, ensuring our product remains at the forefront of innovation. Embrace the challenge of investigating and resolving complex issues, and contribute to documentation that elevates team knowledge. GitLab's global, distributed environment means you'll collaborate seamlessly across time zones, contributing to a culture that values openness and diversity.

 Some examples of our projects: 

• Building an AI-powered Code Suggestion feature
• New service to scan repositories for context to make suggestions better
• Improving Duo Chat by adding features to explain code and write tests

What you’ll do  

• Advocate for improvements to product quality, security, and performance that have particular impact across your team.
• Solve technical problems of high scope and complexity.
• Exert influence on the overall objectives and long-range goals of your team.
• Experience with performance and optimization problems, particularly at large scale, and a demonstrated ability to both diagnose and prevent these problems.
• Help to define and improve our internal standards for style, maintainability, and best practices for a high-scale web environment. Maintain and advocate for these standards through code review.
• Represent GitLab and its values in public communication around broader initiatives, specific projects, and community contributions.
• Provide mentorship for Junior and Intermediate Engineers on your team to help them grow in their technical responsibilities and remove blockers to their autonomy.
• Confidently ship moderately sized features and improvements with minimal guidance and support from other team members. Collaborate with the team on larger projects.
• Improves the engineering projects at GitLab as a project maintainer. For more information regarding timelines and exceptions, see this page.

What you’ll bring 

• Ruby on Rails professional experience (5+ years preferred)
• SQL and database skills (PostgreSQL experience a plus)
• Proven experience building web applications and APIs
• Proficiency in the English language, both written and verbal, sufficient for achieving consensus and success in a remote and largely asynchronous work environment
• Demonstrated capacity to clearly and concisely communicate about complex technical, architectural, and/or organizational problems and propose thorough iterative solutions
• Experience with performance and optimization problems and a demonstrated ability to both diagnose and prevent these problems
• Experience owning a project from concept to production, including proposal, discussion, and execution.
• Self-motivated and self-managing, with strong organizational skills.
• Comfort working in a highly agile, intensely iterative software development process
• Positive and solution-oriented mindset
• An inclination towards communication, inclusion, and visibility
• You are familiar with working in an open source environment
• You are comfortable working in a cross-functional organization
• You are able to thrive in a fully remote organization
• You are able to use GitLab
• You share our values, and work in accordance with those values

Bonus qualifications

• Experience with Python or Golang development
• Understanding of prompt engineering and tuning generative AI outputs
• Creativity in applying generative AI to solve problems and enhance products
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to adapt quickly to new information

About the team

The team at GitLab is dedicated to fostering a collaborative and innovative development environment. They actively contribute to creating high-quality code, emphasizing best practices and continuous improvement. For a detailed insight into their processes and workflows, you can explore the team's handbook pages here. This resource provides a comprehensive guide to their approach in code creation, including coding standards, code review processes, and collaborative development practices. Joining this team means being part of a culture that values excellence, open communication, and the ongoing evolution of development methodologies

How GitLab will support you

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• All remote, asynchronous work environment
• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and development budget 
• Parental leave 
• Home office support

Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.