Fullstack Engineer - Contributor Success, Strategy

An overview of this role

The way software is built has fundamentally changed. A new generation of developers builds with and alongside AI, and GitLab has a strategic imperative to win this market. This is a pivotal moment to secure our position as the leading DevSecOps platform for the next decade.

As a Full-Stack Engineer within the Contributor Success team, your mission is to build the bridges that connect the vibrant ecosystem of AI coding tools directly to GitLab.

You will meet the next wave of developers where they are—in tools like Replit, Continue.dev, Aider and many more! You will create the unavoidable on-ramp that graduates them to the full power of GitLab's single platform. You will be on the front lines, solving the critical challenge of abstracting GitLab's broad capabilities to make its power accessible to millions of new users.

What You’ll Do  

• Develop and maintain robust integrations between GitLab and leading open-source AI coding tools (e.g., Continue.dev, Aider, OpenHands) and strategic partner platforms, making it easier for developers using these tools to contribute to GitLab-hosted projects.  

• Design, build, and iterate on a reusable connector framework using modern best practices, focusing on standards like OAuth 2.0 and efficient API client design for GitLab's APIs.  

• Contribute directly to the codebase of target open-source AI tools (primarily in Python and TypeScript), enhancing their capabilities and ensuring seamless, high-quality integration with GitLab.  

• Provide expert technical guidance and support to our partners and the broader open-source community, fostering a collaborative environment and improving the contributor experience for those integrating with GitLab.

• Collaborate closely with a cross-functional team, including Business Development, Product Management, and the GitLab for Education program to scope technical requirements and build effective 'graduation paths' for new developers.

• Implement contributor efficiency tooling improvements by making GitLab the seamless backend for AI-assisted development workflows, thus simplifying how users of AI tools interact with and contribute to GitLab projects.

• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code for both backend services (primarily Python or Go for specific integration components) and frontend components (primarily Vue.js, or TypeScript for IDE extensions) with the goal to also learn Ruby on Rails and contribute to GitLab.

What You’ll Bring 

• Solid Full-Stack Experience (3-5 years):

  • Proficiency in backend languages such as Python, Ruby (especially Rails), or Go. Python is key for tools like Aider and OpenHands.  

  • Strong frontend skills, particularly with TypeScript/JavaScript and modern frameworks like Vue.js or React. TypeScript is crucial for VS Code extensions (like Continue.dev) and the frontend of tools like OpenHands.  

  • Demonstrable experience building and consuming RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs, with a proven ability to create robust and scalable integrations between disparate systems.  

  • Deep understanding of Git and modern version control workflows, essential for both internal development and effective open-source contributions.  

  • Familiarity with OAuth 2.0 and other authentication/authorization mechanisms for secure inter-system communication.  

• AI Tooling & Integration Acumen:

  • A keen interest and ideally direct experience in the AI-assisted software development space, including familiarity with how AI coding assistants (like Continue.dev, Aider) operate and integrate with LLMs.  

  • Experience integrating with third-party APIs, particularly those related to LLMs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama) or developer productivity tools. This includes understanding context management for LLMs.

  • Basic understanding of prompt engineering principles and the ability to iterate on prompts to achieve desired AI outputs for integration purposes.  

• IDE Extension & Open Source Affinity:

  • Experience or a strong, demonstrable interest in developing extensions for IDEs like VS Code (using TypeScript) or JetBrains IDEs (using Kotlin/Java) is highly desirable, directly relevant for tools like Continue.dev.

  • Experience contributing to or actively working with open-source projects (like those mentioned), understanding community dynamics, collaborative development practices (PRs, issues, discussions), and licensing (e.g., Apache 2.0, MIT).

• Contributor Success Mindset & Skills:

  • A problem-solving mindset, especially when tackling the unique challenges of integrating AI into complex systems and debugging AI-generated or AI-influenced code to improve the developer/contributor experience.  

  • Proven adaptability and a passion for continuous learning, essential for staying current in the rapidly evolving AI and developer tool landscape.  

  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively with internal teams, external partners, and diverse open-source communities to guide and support their contributions.

  • Ability to understand and explain why a solution works, not just how, and a commitment to writing robust, reusable, and maintainable code that benefits the broader community. 

About the team

The goal of the team is to lead the Contributor program, GitLab for Open Source program, GitLab for Education program and in addition support and attract customers who co-create GitLab with us, and increase the efficiency of our contribution process through technical and process improvements to sustain our ambition of 170+ contributors with merged MRs per month to GitLab. This is aligned with GitLab’s mission to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world.

Remote-Global