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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 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuZIb5zszQI] as we
build technology that transforms how the world develops software.
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STAFF FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEER, AGENTIC SDLC - (EMEA ONLY)
AN OVERVIEW OF THIS ROLE
GitLab’s Forward Deployed Engineering team is a field-situated product
engineering function focused on strategic customer outcomes, artificial
intelligence (AI) adoption, and direct contributions to GitLab’s product. This
isn't a traditional field engineering, solutions architecture, or professional
services role. As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work closely with
customers while maintaining the technical standards and contribution discipline
of a Staff-level product engineer.
You'll work where strategic customer urgency, complex technical ambiguity, and
GitLab product execution intersect. You'll partner directly with strategic
customers and teams across Product, Engineering, Support, Site Reliability
Engineering (SRE), Solutions Architecture (SA), Customer Success Architecture
(CSA), Customer Success Management (CSM), and Professional Services. You'll
diagnose and resolve high-impact adoption blockers, contribute
production-quality fixes and features, and turn what you learn into repeatable
patterns for GitLab and its customers.
WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS
Strategic customers sometimes encounter challenges that are too broad, deep,
urgent, or cross-functional for any single team to own from start to finish.
These challenges may involve product gaps, performance degradation, scale
bottlenecks, AI governance, adoption blockers, architectural constraints, Git
usage patterns, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD)
complexity, application programming interface (API) automation, security
requirements, or operational instability.
Forward Deployed Engineering provides technical stewardship in these moments.
The team doesn't simply observe, report, or escalate. You'll engage directly,
diagnose the underlying technical problem, collaborate with the right teams,
contribute code or technical solutions where appropriate, and transition the
outcome into normal ownership once the customer is stable and the learning can
be reused.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
PRODUCT CONTRIBUTION
• Contribute production-quality code to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems.
• Develop bug fixes, features, integrations, tooling, and performance
improvements when strategic customer outcomes require direct engineering
work.
• Work within GitLab’s product and engineering processes, including issue
discovery, merge request creation, testing, review, documentation, and
maintainability.
• Partner with Product and Engineering so customer-driven solutions support
long-term product direction rather than becoming one-off customizations.
• Turn blockers discovered in the field into durable product improvements,
reference architectures, documentation, and repeatable implementation
patterns.
STRATEGIC TECHNICAL STEWARDSHIP
• Engage with strategically important customers when adoption, retention,
executive confidence, or public trust is materially at risk.
• Diagnose complex problems across GitLab product behavior, customer
architecture, Git internals, CI/CD workflows, API usage, observability,
infrastructure, networking, and cloud environments.
• Coordinate across Product, Engineering, SRE, Support, SA, CSA, CSM,
Professional Services, and customer technical teams to drive resolution from
discovery through handoff.
• Provide recommendations grounded in data, traces, and systems analysis to
improve GitLab usage, workflows, automation, and architecture.
• Create durable outcomes without establishing permanent dependency on Forward
Deployed Engineering.
AI ADOPTION AND AGENTIC SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE
• Drive governed, measurable, and production-oriented adoption of GitLab Duo
Agent Platform with strategic customers.
• Identify and resolve AI adoption blockers involving governance, usage
controls, auditability, security, compliance, operating models, workflow
design, and integrations.
• Develop customer-safe adoption patterns for the agentic software development
lifecycle (SDLC), AI-assisted development, intent-based review, AI
governance, and human-in-the-loop software delivery.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Field, and Customer Success teams to turn
AI adoption learning into reusable guidance and product improvements.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
• Create technical narratives grounded in customer experience and product
reality that can help shape the industry’s approach.
• Contribute to Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, reference
architectures, technical strategy memos, and adoption frameworks.
• Guide ideas through discovery, formulation, validation, amplification, and
adoption across GitLab.
• Partner with SA, CSA, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Product Marketing
Management, CSM, Support, and executive stakeholders to make technical
thought leadership a shared company capability.
WHAT YOU’LL BRING
• Staff-level experience building, operating, or improving complex production
software systems.
• Experience contributing to large, mature product codebases with high
standards for testing, maintainability, performance, and security.
• Strong Ruby on Rails or Go experience and the ability to contribute directly
to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems.
• Experience with AI-assisted software development, agentic workflows, AI
governance, model evaluation, context management, prompt and workflow design,
or AI adoption in enterprise environments.
• Experience diagnosing complex system behavior across application code, data
stores, infrastructure, observability, networking, APIs, and customer usage
patterns.
• Deep knowledge of modern DevSecOps workflows, including Git, merge requests,
CI/CD, security controls, compliance needs, and enterprise software delivery.
• Experience working with strategic customers or senior technical stakeholders
in ambiguous, high-impact situations.
• The ability to coordinate across product, engineering, field, and customer
teams without formal authority.
• Strong written communication and sound judgment, including the ability to
create technical narratives and distinguish reusable product work from
customer-specific customization.
STRONGLY
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
• Direct experience with GitLab as a platform, including GitLab.com, GitLab
Dedicated, or GitLab Self-Managed.
• Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq,
Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability tools.
• Deep familiarity with Git internals, repository performance, large-scale Git
usage patterns, or GitLab Runner behavior.
• Experience creating technical thought-leadership materials, such as
whitepapers, technical talks, architecture frameworks, requests for comments,
public technical writing, or internal strategy documents.
• A background in performance engineering, site reliability engineering,
platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or distributed systems.
• Experience working in open source or highly asynchronous engineering
environments.
TECHNOLOGIES AND DOMAINS
Directly relevant technologies and domains include:
• Ruby on Rails
• Go
• AI-assisted development and the agentic SDLC
• PostgreSQL
• Redis and Sidekiq
• Git internals
• GitLab CI/CD and Runner architecture
• Kubernetes and containers
• Terraform
• Linux, networking, observability, and performance analysis
• Vue and TypeScript
• APIs and automation
• DevSecOps governance, security, and compliance
WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT
This role isn't:
• A generic field engineering role.
• A proof-of-concept factory.
• A replacement for Solutions Architecture, Customer Success Architecture,
Customer Success Management, Professional Services, Support, SRE, Product, or
Engineering.
• A customer-specific customization function.
• Unbilled Professional Services.
• A requirements-gathering role that only escalates to Product.
• An AI evangelism role disconnected from product execution.
SUCCESS MEASURES
Success in this role may include:
• Stabilizing strategic customer adoption or retention risks.
• Fixing product bugs or contributing features.
• Removing AI adoption blockers for strategic accounts.
• Creating reusable implementation patterns and transitioning them to long-term
owners.
• Producing or enabling Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, or
technical narratives.
• Resolving cross-functional customer challenges without creating permanent
dependency on Forward Deployed Engineering.
• Equipping Product, Engineering, Support, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and
SA teams with better guidance based on learning from the field.
• Increasing adoption and effective use of GitLab capabilities, especially
GitLab Duo and GitLab Duo Agent Platform, in targeted accounts.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The Forward Deployed Engineering team connects strategic customer needs with
GitLab product execution. The team works directly with customers and across
GitLab to resolve complex adoption challenges, contribute durable product
improvements, and create reusable technical guidance. Its goal is to stabilize
urgent situations, improve the product, and transition ongoing ownership to the
appropriate team rather than create a permanent dependency.
IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE
You're a Staff-level product or platform engineer who can operate in the field
without becoming field-only. You're comfortable reading traces, writing
production code, debugging architecture, discussing AI governance, leading a
customer technical session, opening a merge request, outlining a whitepaper, and
coordinating across teams to achieve a strategic customer outcome.
You're not simply a strong communicator with technical awareness. You're a
credible engineer with the judgment, presence, and narrative ability to turn
customer reality into product contributions, adoption guidance, and
company-level thought leadership.
We welcome candidates with different backgrounds and levels of experience. Many
successful candidates don't meet every qualification. If you're excited about
this role, we encourage you to apply and let our recruiting team assess your
application.
HOW GITLAB SUPPORTS FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES
• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/benefits/general-and-entity-benefits/]
• Flexible Paid Time Off
[https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/time-off-and-absence/time-off-types/#flexible-paid-time-off-pto]
• Team Member Resource Groups
[https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/inclusion/tmrg-tmag/]
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
[https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/stock-options/]
• Growth and Development Fund
[https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/growth-and-development/]
• Parental Leave
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/benefits/general-and-entity-benefits/#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
[https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#examples-of-select-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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy.
[https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/candidate-faq/recruitment-privacy-policy/]
Your privacy is important to us.
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any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-policies/inc-usa/#equal-employment-opportunity-policy] and EEO
is the Law
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/labor-and-employment-notices/#eeoc-us-equal-employment-opportunity-commission-notices].
If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-policies/inc-usa/#reasonable-accommodation],
please let us know during the recruiting process
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/interviewing/#adjustments-to-our-interview-process].