Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby on Rails), Plan: Planning Views

GitLab
Bangalore, India
On-siteCareer-pivot friendly

Who this role is best for

Aimed at senior backend engineers with full stack experience who thrive in asynchronous, distributed teams and have a strong product mindset.

Best fit for

  • Senior Ruby on Rails engineers with a track record of mentoring and leading projects across large codebases
    — “Experience leading and supporting other engineers
  • Candidates skilled in PostgreSQL optimization and real-time systems design
    — “Strong PostgreSQL skills and experience improving PostgreSQL performance at scale
  • Individuals who have shaped product requirements and designed scalable APIs in a collaborative environment
    — “Collaborate closely with Product to shape requirements and break projects into shippable iterations

Things to consider

  • On-call rotations are mandatory, requiring availability for production troubleshooting and root cause analysis
    — “Participate in on-call rotations to troubleshoot production issues
  • The team works asynchronously and requires strong communication in a distributed environment
    — “Strong written and verbal communication skills for an asynchronous, distributed environment

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with AI integration in development workflows or AI-powered features
    — “Experience integrating AI into development workflows or developing AI-powered features
  • Showcase contributions to real-time systems or backend performance improvements
    — “Contribute to real-time features that keep work item information current as it changes
  • Demonstrate your skills in optimizing PostgreSQL and moving workloads to alternative databases
    — “Improve PostgreSQL performance at scale by optimizing queries and writes, denormalizing and partitioning tables
  • Include examples of mentoring engineers or contributing to open source through code reviews and feedback
    — “Mentor engineers and open source contributors through code reviews, pairing, feedback
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Senior

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • optimized PostgreSQL performance
  • implemented real-time features
Typical background
5+ years of experience in backend development

Skills & requirements

Required

Ruby On RailsBackend ArchitecturePerformance OptimizationReal-time Features

Preferred

AI Feature DevelopmentGraphql And REST Apis

Stack & domain

Ruby On RailsBackend ArchitectureGraphQLREST ApisReal-time SubscriptionsPostgresql PerformanceElasticsearchClickhouseReal-time FeaturesAI FeaturesAgentic DevelopmentCollaborate CloselyUnderstand User NeedsShape RequirementsBreak Projects Into Shippable IterationsMentor EngineersParticipate In On-call RotationsTroubleshoot Production IssuesImprove ObservabilityDevSecOpsWork Items PlatformAIAgentic ToolsGitlab DuoOpen Source

About the role

Original posting from GitLab via Greenhouse

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables 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 as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.

*Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

An overview of this role

We're looking for an experienced Product Engineer who cares deeply about users and has full stack experience, with a current focus on backend. You'll spend as much time understanding what users need and shaping how features should work as you do building them. You'll work directly with the product manager, engage with users on our public issue tracker and support tickets, and collaborate with contributors.

You'll be deeply involved in the backend architecture that powers the work items platform. This system has to serve millions of work items in a single user's view across tens of thousands of groups and projects.

We provide access to Claude Code and other agentic tools and encourage responsible agentic development. We also build our own artificial intelligence (AI) features by integrating GitLab Duo with the work items platform, so experience developing AI features is a strong plus.

What you’ll do

Collaborate closely with Product to shape requirements and break projects into shippable iterations. Work with other engineers to plan and complete the work.

Design and implement backend features across the GitLab monolith, including GraphQL and REST application programming interfaces (APIs) and real-time subscriptions, with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and user impact.

Improve PostgreSQL performance at scale by optimizing queries and writes, denormalizing and partitioning tables, and moving workloads to Elasticsearch or ClickHouse where appropriate. The work items framework serves as the foundation for some of the highest-traffic surfaces in GitLab.

Contribute to real-time features that keep work item information current as it changes.

Create proofs of concept for complex work. Ensure quality through extensive testing and safe rollouts behind feature flags.

Mentor engineers and open source contributors through code reviews, pairing, feedback, issue preparation, and contribution reviews.

Participate in on-call rotations to troubleshoot production issues, contribute to root cause analysis, and improve observability.

Improve the developer experience for yourself and your team, including test infrastructure, the review process, retrospectives, and how we work together.

What you’ll bring

A strong product mindset. You care about what users are trying to do. You hold strong opinions from the user perspective, listen to peers, and negotiate trade-offs with product managers and users.

Experience leading and supporting other engineers. You've driven projects involving several engineers over months. You care about your teammates' growth and give it your time through thoughtful code reviews, regular feedback, support for career development, hiring, and mentoring contributors.

Full stack experience with a current backend focus, including proficiency with Ruby and Ruby on Rails and experience maintaining backend features in a large, mature codebase.

Strong PostgreSQL skills and experience improving PostgreSQL performance at scale, including query and write optimization, indexing, denormalization, and partitioning.

Experience designing and evolving GraphQL and/or REST APIs, with attention to scalability, backward compatibility, and clear contracts with frontend clients.

Experience improving large automated test suites, with a focus on the performance and reliability of the tests themselves.

Strong written and verbal communication skills for an asynchronous, distributed environment.

Experience integrating AI into development workflows or developing AI-powered features, or working with Elasticsearch, ClickHouse, or Python, is a plus.

About the team

The Planning Views group is part of GitLab's Plan stage. We build the planning experience in GitLab. We're unifying the user experience across work item lists, agile boards, roadmaps, and grid views while building the work items platform underneath them. We're currently working on agile boards. Our work serves every GitLab customer who plans and tracks work and provides a foundation for other Plan stage initiatives, such as Configurable Work Item Types.

We're a team of four engineers: one backend, two frontend, and one full stack. We're located in Australia, India, and Europe and work with a dedicated product manager and an engineering manager. We're asynchronous-first, working in two-week iterations with retrospectives and a weekly sync.

How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees

Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being

Flexible Paid Time Off 

Team Member Resource Groups

Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Growth and Development Fund

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 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.

Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.  

Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.

GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.

Source: GitLab careers (Greenhouse)

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