Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), Tenant Scale, Geo
An overview of this role
As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Geo team in our Tenant Scale group, you’ll build and evolve the features that keep GitLab’s largest, most demanding self-managed customers fast, resilient, and always available. You’ll focus on three core areas of the GitLab product: GitLab Replication, Disaster Recovery, and Backup & Restore, designing and implementing secure, well-tested, and performant Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL-backed services that replicate data across geographic regions, provide fault tolerance, and support business continuity. You’ll partner closely with your Engineering Manager to shape technical direction, lead architectural decisions, and turn complex customer needs into iterative solutions, while mentoring other engineers and advising Customer Support on production issues. In your first year, you’ll own key Geo features end to end, drive tangible improvements in system scalability and reliability, and help define technical best practices for distributed, highly available systems within GitLab.
Some examples of our projects:
Geo Proxy
Geo Self-Service Framework
Geo-based Runner Acceleration
What you’ll do
Design and develop secure, well-tested, and performant backend features and improvements for the GitLab Geo product, focusing on replication, disaster recovery, and backup and restore.
Partner with your Engineering Manager and product stakeholders to assess technical feasibility, shape solution approaches, and align implementations with customer needs.
Deliver proof-of-concept implementations to inform architectural choices and guide technical discussions within the Tenant Scale group.
Break down and drive complex technical projects in an iterative way, owning features end to end from proposal through deployment and ongoing maintenance.
Lead architectural design decisions for Geo Replication, Disaster Recovery, and Backup & Restore, solving challenges in distributed, fault-tolerant, and highly available systems.
Mentor and support other engineers by sharing best practices for Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and distributed system design through code reviews and pairing.
Collaborate with Customer Support and other engineering teams to investigate and resolve production issues, feeding real-world learnings back into product and architecture improvements.
What you’ll bring
Professional experience developing backend services in production environments using Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL
Background designing and implementing fault-tolerant, distributed, and highly available systems for large-scale applications
Hands-on experience with queueing and messaging systems, and with provisioning or configuration management tools
Ability to lead architectural design decisions, define technical approaches, and drive complex system changes from concept through delivery
Experience mentoring and supporting other engineers, including sharing and promoting backend and distributed systems best practices
Familiarity with backup and restore patterns for databases, application configuration, and infrastructure as code in distributed environments
Comfortable working asynchronously with cross-functional partners and translating customer or support feedback into technical improvements
Openness to learning new technologies and applying transferable skills, even when experience does not align with every listed requirement
About the team
The Geo team is part of GitLab’s Tenant Scale group and owns GitLab Geo, an enterprise feature that replicates self-managed GitLab deployments across geographic locations to improve performance, resilience, and availability for some of our largest customers. The team is small, backend-focused, and works primarily in Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL, collaborating asynchronously across time zones and partnering closely with product, support, and other engineering teams. Together we design, build, and maintain the architecture and services that keep distributed GitLab instances coordinated and consistent, including intelligent proxying so users access the most recent data for everyday workflows and disaster recovery. The team is focused on challenges like proximity-based data access, fault-tolerant replication, and robust backup and restore for large, distributed systems.
About the job
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Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), Tenant Scale, Geo
An overview of this role
As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Geo team in our Tenant Scale group, you’ll build and evolve the features that keep GitLab’s largest, most demanding self-managed customers fast, resilient, and always available. You’ll focus on three core areas of the GitLab product: GitLab Replication, Disaster Recovery, and Backup & Restore, designing and implementing secure, well-tested, and performant Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL-backed services that replicate data across geographic regions, provide fault tolerance, and support business continuity. You’ll partner closely with your Engineering Manager to shape technical direction, lead architectural decisions, and turn complex customer needs into iterative solutions, while mentoring other engineers and advising Customer Support on production issues. In your first year, you’ll own key Geo features end to end, drive tangible improvements in system scalability and reliability, and help define technical best practices for distributed, highly available systems within GitLab.
Some examples of our projects:
Geo Proxy
Geo Self-Service Framework
Geo-based Runner Acceleration
What you’ll do
Design and develop secure, well-tested, and performant backend features and improvements for the GitLab Geo product, focusing on replication, disaster recovery, and backup and restore.
Partner with your Engineering Manager and product stakeholders to assess technical feasibility, shape solution approaches, and align implementations with customer needs.
Deliver proof-of-concept implementations to inform architectural choices and guide technical discussions within the Tenant Scale group.
Break down and drive complex technical projects in an iterative way, owning features end to end from proposal through deployment and ongoing maintenance.
Lead architectural design decisions for Geo Replication, Disaster Recovery, and Backup & Restore, solving challenges in distributed, fault-tolerant, and highly available systems.
Mentor and support other engineers by sharing best practices for Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and distributed system design through code reviews and pairing.
Collaborate with Customer Support and other engineering teams to investigate and resolve production issues, feeding real-world learnings back into product and architecture improvements.
What you’ll bring
Professional experience developing backend services in production environments using Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL
Background designing and implementing fault-tolerant, distributed, and highly available systems for large-scale applications
Hands-on experience with queueing and messaging systems, and with provisioning or configuration management tools
Ability to lead architectural design decisions, define technical approaches, and drive complex system changes from concept through delivery
Experience mentoring and supporting other engineers, including sharing and promoting backend and distributed systems best practices
Familiarity with backup and restore patterns for databases, application configuration, and infrastructure as code in distributed environments
Comfortable working asynchronously with cross-functional partners and translating customer or support feedback into technical improvements
Openness to learning new technologies and applying transferable skills, even when experience does not align with every listed requirement
About the team
The Geo team is part of GitLab’s Tenant Scale group and owns GitLab Geo, an enterprise feature that replicates self-managed GitLab deployments across geographic locations to improve performance, resilience, and availability for some of our largest customers. The team is small, backend-focused, and works primarily in Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL, collaborating asynchronously across time zones and partnering closely with product, support, and other engineering teams. Together we design, build, and maintain the architecture and services that keep distributed GitLab instances coordinated and consistent, including intelligent proxying so users access the most recent data for everyday workflows and disaster recovery. The team is focused on challenges like proximity-based data access, fault-tolerant replication, and robust backup and restore for large, distributed systems.