Backend Engineer, Geo Team
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 values and 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.
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 values and 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.
An overview of this role
As a Backend Engineer on the Geo team, you'll design, build, and maintain the backend services that power GitLab Geo, Disaster Recovery, and Backup and Restore. Working primarily in Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL, you'll improve replication, verification, failover, and data migration for large self-managed and GitLab Dedicated environments. You'll collaborate with Database Engineering, Infrastructure, GitLab Dedicated, and other teams to help distributed customers access repositories faster and recover reliably, while maintaining a high bar for observability, careful rollout, and operational resilience.
What you’ll do
- Design, build, and maintain backend functionality for Geo, Disaster Recovery, and Backup and Restore using Ruby on Rails and related services.
- Improve replication and verification workflows for repositories and related data, with a focus on performance, correctness, and operational simplicity.
- Use PostgreSQL features, including logical replication, to support Geo, GitLab Dedicated migrations, and future Cells architectures.
- Measure and reduce replication lag and verification failures through logs, metrics, and alerts, identifying disaster recovery risks early.
- Collaborate with Database Engineering, Infrastructure, GitLab Dedicated, Tenant Scale, and other teams on initiatives that affect Geo and migrations.
- Participate in incident response and post-incident reviews, then turn findings into product and operational improvements.
- Partner with Support, Site Reliability Engineering, and Customer Success on Requests for Help, customer escalations, complex migrations, and incidents where Geo capabilities are critical.
- Own projects from proposal and design through implementation, review, rollout, and production monitoring, while providing constructive feedback on merge requests.
What you’ll bring
- Experience building and maintaining Ruby on Rails applications in production environments.
- Experience with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, including replication, indexing, and performance tuning.
- Understanding of distributed systems and data replication concepts, including consistency, eventual consistency, and failure modes.
- Experience building and operating background job or worker systems, such as Sidekiq, including monitoring and retry strategies.
- Knowledge of replication and verification patterns, such as ordered event delivery and checksums, and experience debugging issues such as replication lag.
- Experience operating or debugging large production deployments across installation methods, operating systems, or cloud providers.
- Familiarity with recovery point objective (RPO), recovery time objective (RTO), planned failover, and backup and restore for stateful systems.
About the team
The Geo group is part of GitLab's Platforms Engineering organization and works closely with GitLab Dedicated, Database Engineering, Infrastructure, and Tenant Scale teams. Our work includes cross-team initiatives such as GitLab Dedicated migrations and the Cells architecture. We work asynchronously, with regular planning and retrospectives and a high bar for operational ownership, incident management, testing, and rollout safety.
How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees
- Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Team Member Resource Groups
- Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Growth and Development Fund
- Parental Leave
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.
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.
Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.
GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is 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 also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.