Intermediate Backend Engineer (Ruby on Rails), Create: Source Code Management id-7981

May 6, 2025

GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating the rate of human progress. This mission is integral to our culture, influencing how we hire, build products, and lead our industry. We make this possible at GitLab by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values. Learn more about Life at GitLab.

Other Jobs You May Be Interested In

Thanks to products like Duo Enterprise, and Duo Workflow, customers get the benefit of AI at every stage of the SDLC. The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier. All team members are encouraged and expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact across our global organisation.

An overview of this role

We're currently looking for an intermediate-level Backend Engineer for our Source Code BE team. The Source Code BE team is focused on GitLab's suite of tools around Source Code Management. We interface with the Gitaly and Code Review teams and work closely with stable counterparts including the Source Code frontend team, product management, product design, testing, security, UX research and technical writing.

The Source Code team is focused on building and supporting all use cases related to interacting with the code stored in each project repository. Whether it's a quick consultation of a commit or a deep analysis of the history of changes to any given file, our team is tasked with building and supporting features that enable a great experience.

Source Code is one of the oldest and most complex parts of the GitLab application. We provide the interface layer, via Gitaly, to the Git repositories. A large portion of GitLab traffic, whether on gitlab.com or in private instances, is transported by Source Code endpoints, and we are focused on providing high reliability through performance tuning, SQL tuning, caching and rate limiting.

You can find more details about our roadmap and the team here:

• Direction - Source Code Management

• Team Handbook Page

What you’ll do

• Work on projects such as the GitLab monolith in rails and GitLab Shell as well as Workhorse written Golang

• Investigate and mitigate performance issues

• Ensure we deliver on our commitments to the market by communicating clearly with stakeholders

• Grow your skills as an engineer deepening speciality towards the many topics covered by this team: from deep integration of distributed systems to supporting frontend applications with GraphQL, including database optimization and performance work

• Develop features and improvements to the GitLab product in a secure, well-tested, and performant way

• Collaborate with Product Management and other stakeholders within Engineering (Frontend, UX, etc.) to maintain a high bar for quality in a fast-paced, iterative environment

• Advocate for improvements to product quality, security, and performance

• Solve technical problems of moderate scope and complexity

• Craft code that meets our internal standards for style, maintainability, and best practices for a high-scale web environment. Maintain and advocate for these standards through code review

• Ship small features and improvements with minimal guidance and support from other team members while collaborating with the team on larger projects.

What you’ll bring

• Professional experience with Ruby on Rails

• Some experience or interest with Golang

• Professional experience with SQL (ideally Postgres)

• An understanding and interest in deep Git functionality

• Professional experience building web applications and APIs (ideally Ruby Grape or graphql-ruby)

• Passion and interest in performance tuning and Rails caching strategies for high-traffic endpoints and a demonstrated ability to both diagnose and prevent these problems

• Experience building highly available and performant business-critical product features

• Demonstrated capacity to clearly and concisely communicate about complex technical, architectural, and/or organizational problems and propose thorough iterative solutions.

• Comfort working in a highly agile, intensely iterative software development process.

• Experience owning a project from concept to production, including proposal, discussion, and execution.

• Self-motivated and self-managing, with excellent organizational skills.

• Ability to thrive in a fully remote organization.

• Contributions to GitLab are highly regarded

• Exposure or interest in Frontend modern libraries is valued but not required.

About the team

The current team is present around the globe leveraging asynchronous work practices that ensure follow-the-sun coverage for both collaboration and incident response when necessary. At the moment, the team counts on 11 engineers spanning from Associate to Staff levels distributed across APAC, EMEA and AMER. The team collaborates regularly with teams like Gitaly, Data Stores, Duo/AI Teams, Code Review and Remote Development Team, fostering innovation and alignment across departments.

The team is invested in both advancing the Source Code Management product category in a collaborative environment with product, design and frontend counterparts as well as improving reliability of our platform by addressing customer bugs, infrastructure development and security issues. They play a vital role in integrating and sometimes expanding internal systems like Gitaly, GitLab Shell and Workhorse to deliver on customer requirements and support our offering which among others includes Git Large File Storage (LFS). Their roadmap includes initiatives like continuing to improve our branch protections through Branch Rules and Approval Rules, CODEOWNERS functionalities, repository security, analytics and user experience improvements. Also includes technical initiatives like database scaling efforts (Cells), Reusable Rapid Diffs performance project and address Tech Debt.

How GitLab will support you

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

• All remote, asynchronous work environment

• Flexible Paid Time Off

• Team Member Resource Groups

• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan

• Growth and development budget

• Parental leave

• Home office support

Back to blog

Common Interview Questions And Answers

1. HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR DAY?

This is what this question poses: When do you focus and start working seriously? What are the hours you work optimally? Are you a night owl? A morning bird? Remote teams can be made up of people working on different shifts and around the world, so you won't necessarily be stuck in the 9-5 schedule if it's not for you...

2. HOW DO YOU USE THE DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

When you're working on a remote team, there's no way to chat in the hallway between meetings or catch up on the latest project during an office carpool. Therefore, virtual communication will be absolutely essential to get your work done...

3. WHAT IS "WORKING REMOTE" REALLY FOR YOU?

Many people want to work remotely because of the flexibility it allows. You can work anywhere and at any time of the day...

4. WHAT DO YOU NEED IN YOUR PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO SUCCEED IN YOUR WORK?

With this question, companies are looking to see what equipment they may need to provide you with and to verify how aware you are of what remote working could mean for you physically and logistically...

5. HOW DO YOU PROCESS INFORMATION?

Several years ago, I was working in a team to plan a big event. My supervisor made us all work as a team before the big day. One of our activities has been to find out how each of us processes information...

6. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE CALENDAR AND THE PROGRAM? WHICH APPLICATIONS / SYSTEM DO YOU USE?

Or you may receive even more specific questions, such as: What's on your calendar? Do you plan blocks of time to do certain types of work? Do you have an open calendar that everyone can see?...

7. HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE FILES, LINKS, AND TABS ON YOUR COMPUTER?

Just like your schedule, how you track files and other information is very important. After all, everything is digital!...

8. HOW TO PRIORITIZE WORK?

The day I watched Marie Forleo's film separating the important from the urgent, my life changed. Not all remote jobs start fast, but most of them are...

9. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A MEETING AND PREPARE A MEETING? WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING DURING THE MEETING?

Just as communication is essential when working remotely, so is organization. Because you won't have those opportunities in the elevator or a casual conversation in the lunchroom, you should take advantage of the little time you have in a video or phone conference...

10. HOW DO YOU USE TECHNOLOGY ON A DAILY BASIS, IN YOUR WORK AND FOR YOUR PLEASURE?

This is a great question because it shows your comfort level with technology, which is very important for a remote worker because you will be working with technology over time...

DISCLAIMER