Intermediate Site Reliability Engineer - Database Operations

Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) are responsible for keeping all user-facing services and other GitLab production systems running smoothly 24x7x365. SREs are a blend of pragmatic operators and software craftspeople that apply sound engineering principles, operational discipline, and mature automation to our environments and the GitLab codebase. We specialize in systems, whether it be networking, the Linux kernel, or some more specific interest in scaling, algorithms, or distributed systems, along these functions:

• Build: Automating every operational task is a core requirement for Environment Automation SRE. E.g. package updates, configuration changes across all customer platforms without interruptions, tools for automatic provisioning of customer facing services, etc.

• Maintain: Develop a good (early) warning system and system that allows for reliable and quick maintenance tasks, such as library upgrades, version migrations and similar. 

• Plan: Develop monitoring and alerting systems that predict capacity needs based on customer usage patterns. Plan for new service rollouts, expansion of existing services and preparing advice for customers to optimize their resource consumption.  

• Respond: Respond to user emergencies, platform alerts and support requests.

• Enhance: Implement new, and update existing security measures to protect GitLab infrastructure.

• Partner: Act as Subject Matter Experts within the GitLab Infrastructure team when interacting with internal and external compliance assessors during certification and recertification of regulatory requirements (ex. FedRAMP, SOC2, ISO).  

• Collaborate: Work with other engineering stakeholders on resolving larger architectural bottlenecks and participate by offering a large-scale operational point of view. Work in close collaboration with software development teams to shape the future roadmap and establish strong operational readiness across teams. 

The Database Reliability Engineer at GitLab is responsible for Building, Running, and owning the entire lifecycle of the PostgreSQL database engine for GitLab.com. See the DBRE team page for details.

The Team

Currently 4 team members distributed across EMEA, APAC, AMER. The incoming teammate can look forward to a supportive leadership team that plans to invest substantially in the DBRE team by adding +5 SREs and DBREs over the next 12+ months. Not only do we expect to more than double the team size, we plan to evolve the team by supporting the individual's cross-skilling and up-skilling journey -- more hands, more learning and lots of interesting work awaits.

Mandatory technical skills and experience

• Advanced datastore platform management experience, preferably using Postgres at scale

• Advanced Cloud Infrastructure management, preferably using GCP

• Advanced experience with Linux

• Solid experience with automation at scale using one or more of the following:

  • Experience developing infrastructure and database automations

  • Automation, using Terraform

  • Orchestration, using Chef and/or Ansible

• Solid experience implementing monitoring at scale (preferably Prometheus and Grafana)

Mandatory non-technical skills, experience and characteristics

• Willingness and ability to live and promote Gitlab's unique CREDIT Values in one's day to day work and interactions with teammates.

• Superior verbal and written communication skills

• Comfortable and productive working asynchronously across timezones and cultures, at the speed and scale of business.

• Act like an Owner with Gitlab's resources.

Compensation

Please view the compensation range for this role at the bottom of the position description.