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At GitLab, developers are independent and self-organized individual contributors who work together as a tight team in a remote and agile way.

The Database Group works on developing solutions for scalability, application performance, data growth and developer enablement, especially where it concerns interactions with the database. In support of our Transparency value, the Database Group page includes links to the boards listing our current work in flight, team meeting recordings as well as our roadmap. Hopefully this is the type of work that gets you excited about joining the team, if so please read on!

Most backend developers work on all aspects of GitLab, building features, fixing bugs, and generally improving the application. The Database Group is responsible for making application changes to improve database performance, availability and reliability.  Additionally, the Backend Engineer, Database will be expected to review database related code with the goal of eventually becoming a Database Maintainer.

The Work

Our work can be grouped into a couple of main categories: responsive and enablement. Categories that we consider responsive work are areas that require our immediate or near-term attention to help with performance, scaling and SQL expertise. Typically these involve reviewing slow performing queries and providing guidance on how to improve these queries.

Enablement, as the name suggests, is about enabling development efficiencies for our greater development community and improving our scalability story for GitLab.com. We have some lofty goals on what we’d like to achieve in the next year. We cannot do all of the work we have identified by ourselves, so we are creating tools to enable teams to implement scalable solutions. Below is a list of a few of these initiatives:

• Database Partitioning
• Implementing cluster-wide unique identifiers for Cells Topology Service
• Load Balancer Improvements
• Automated database migration testing

What you’ll do

• Develop new features in collaboration with our product management, UX, and frontend teams
• Keep changes small and iterate towards the best solution
• Reviewing database related changes submitted by other engineers or community contributors
• Documenting database best practices or patterns to avoid
• Developing tooling to proactively inform developers of potential performance issues
• Research, design and implement solutions to improve product performance

What you’ll bring

• Professional software engineering experience with PostgreSQL in large production environments
• Significant experience with Ruby on Rails or other Ruby frameworks
• You can reason about software, algorithms, and performance at a high level
• You are passionate about open source
• Strong written communication skills
• Self-motivated and have strong organizational skills
• You share our values, and work in accordance with those values

Bonus qualifications

• Experience in a peak performance organization, preferably a tech startup
• Experience with the GitLab product as a user or contributor
• Product company experience
• Experience working with a remote team
• Enterprise software company experience
• Developer platform/tool industry experience
• Experience working with a global or otherwise multicultural team
• Computer science education or equivalent experience
• Passionate about/experienced with open source and developer tools

The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of listed locations only. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, and alignment with market data. See more information on our benefits and equity. Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.

California/Colorado/Hawaii/New Jersey/New York/Washington/DC pay range

$98,000 – $210,000 USD

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.