Senior Backend Engineer, Database Excellence

Postgres
UNITED STATES
October 17, 2026
Full Time
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Job Description

Company: GitLab
Location: United States
Workplace Type: Remote
Employment Type: Full-time
Pay / Compensation: $152,800 – $259,200

About the Role

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, trusted by more than 50 million registered users. The Database Excellence group keeps GitLab’s databases running reliably through proactive health management, operational excellence, and automated lifecycle platforms. In this role, you will build and evolve database automation and PostgreSQL-as-a-service capabilities across GitLab’s infrastructure, automating the full lifecycle of PostgreSQL behind high-throughput production workloads.

What You’ll Do / Key Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and maintain Go-based automation managing the full PostgreSQL lifecycle including provisioning, configuration, upgrades, failover, and scaling.
  • Build safe, repeatable automation for zero-downtime PostgreSQL major version upgrades at GitLab.com scale.
  • Research, design, and execute optimizations for PostgreSQL performance, query efficiency, and capacity saturation points.
  • Build GitLab’s PostgreSQL-as-a-service platform to standardize and automate database provisioning across multi-cloud environments.
  • Integrate compute, storage, networking, identity management, and cloud database services into a unified database platform.
  • Develop traffic replay and validation tooling to test database upgrades against production workloads.
  • Operate platform services in production end-to-end, participating in operational reviews and triage.

Requirements & Qualifications

  • Professional software engineering experience operating and scaling PostgreSQL in large, complex production environments.
  • Strong proficiency in Go for designing, building, and maintaining backend systems and automation services.
  • Experience with Kubernetes operators, controllers, or automated stateful service orchestration.
  • Solid understanding of core database operations including high availability, replication, backups, and performance trade-offs.
  • Comfort with Infrastructure as Code practices and cloud infrastructure management.
  • Strong written communication skills and demonstrated ability to work effectively in an all-remote, asynchronous environment.

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications

  • Experience building or operating a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) platform.
  • Familiarity with Ruby and Ruby on Rails codebases.

Benefits & Perks

  • Base salary range of $152,800 to $259,200 depending on location and experience.
  • Equity compensation and Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).
  • Fully remote working model with flexible paid time off.
  • Growth and development fund, parental leave, and comprehensive health coverage.

GitLab is an affirmative action and equal opportunity workplace committed to inclusion and diversity.

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