Staff Backend Engineer, Performance Enablement

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

As a Staff Backend Engineer in GitLab's Performance Enablement group, you'll define and build the self-serve platform that lets GitLab engineering teams own their performance. You'll give internal teams the tooling and guidance to run performance tests, analyze results, track trends, and meet their own performance requirements throughout the development lifecycle. We're a platform, not a consulting service: we build capabilities that teams use independently to deliver a reliable, performant GitLab to customers. In this hands-on technical leadership role, you'll work with the Engineering Manager to shape a multi-quarter vision and roadmap, bringing your performance engineering expertise to influence teams across research and development (R&D).

Some examples of our projects in Performance Enablement:

• Building reusable component-level testing, load testing, performance analysis, trend visibility, and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted engineering skills

• Enabling teams to test performance throughout the development lifecycle, from local development and continuous integration (CI) workflows through pre-release validation, including modular feature teams' own workflows

What you’ll do

• Define the team's technical vision and multi-quarter roadmap with the Engineering Manager, identify opportunities for impact across R&D, and advocate for technical priorities with stakeholders.

• Design and build reusable platform capabilities for performance testing, analysis, reporting, and trend visibility, solving complex technical problems and shipping large capabilities with minimal guidance.

• Turn lessons from early team engagements into reusable capabilities, documentation, and onboarding, measured by each new team needing less hands-on support than the last until teams can adopt the platform and manage their performance independently.

• Coordinate with peer teams across Developer Experience, Infrastructure Platforms, and product groups to align priorities and timing.

• Lead AI-first development practices in how we build and what we ship, including AI skills and agent-assisted performance workflows.

• Mentor engineers in performance engineering, platform design, and technical decision-making.

• Serve as a performance expert for other teams and provide technical guidance on initiatives spanning multiple groups.

• Take part in on-call or operational support where your team's ownership model requires it.

What you’ll bring

• Staff-level backend or platform engineering experience, including setting technical direction across a team and the teams around it.

• A track record of building and operating performance testing and analysis systems, with an understanding of where bottlenecks appear and how to find them.

• Experience leading or anchoring a performance enablement or platform function and achieving measurable adoption of internal tooling by influencing engineers and leaders who don't report to you.

• Experience defining and delivering a multi-quarter technical strategy or roadmap with engineering leadership.

• An AI-first development mindset demonstrated across the software lifecycle, including shaping how a team uses AI.

• Hands-on experience with load and performance testing tools such as k6 or equivalent, Kubernetes, and Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or similar cloud infrastructure.

• Clear written, asynchronous communication, including explaining performance trade-offs to engineers and leadership.

About the team

Performance Enablement is part of Platform Enablement within Developer Experience and Infrastructure…