GitLab
About this role
This is the staff level counterpart to the GitLab Upgrades role above, and the posting describes it as the technical anchor for the team. Where the senior seat improves the delivery tooling, this one guides the direction: defining the architecture for zero downtime upgrades of complex, stateful GitLab installations, setting operational maturity standards and service integration patterns, and shaping cloud native, operator driven deployment across GitLab Operator, Helm charts and the GitLab Environment Toolkit. The database side is a real part of it, including safe PostgreSQL migration approaches and validation that reduces downtime risk, alongside automation for rolling deployments, compatibility checks and rollback paths. Influence is the stated mechanism: writing technical proposals, documenting decisions, mentoring engineers and enabling customer facing teams through design reviews and runbooks. Go is the main language with Rails familiarity useful. GitLab publishes no years figure here either.
Who this is for
What the posting asks for. As with GitLab's other listings, no years of experience figure is published:
- Strong software engineering experience designing and delivering production systems that customers install and operate in their own infrastructure.
- Proficiency in Go for large, complex codebases, with familiarity with Ruby on Rails and Rails application architecture as a useful addition.
- Hands on production Kubernetes experience, including building and maintaining Operators, designing Helm charts for stateful applications, and working with Custom Resource Definitions, admission controllers and controller patterns.
- Knowledge of cloud native systems and tooling such as service mesh, observability stacks, infrastructure as code and automation tools like Terraform or Ansible.
- Experience with stateful workloads and databases, including PostgreSQL schema design and migrations, persistent volumes, storage classes and approaches for reducing downtime during upgrades.
- Understanding of Linux systems and production operations, including package management, systemd, system level debugging, observability, incident response and on call participation.
- The ability to guide through influence: clear technical proposals, documented decisions, mentoring and cross team work.
- Interest in open source infrastructure or deployment tooling, or transferable experience from adjacent domains.
What the work actually looks like:
- Guide the technical vision and architecture for GitLab's cloud native self managed deployments and upgrade workflows.
- Establish operational maturity standards, service integration patterns and deployment models.
- Design and maintain Kubernetes Operators, Helm charts and upgrade orchestration tooling.
- Develop automation and integration frameworks for database migrations, rolling deployments, compatibility checks and rollback paths.
- Define database and application lifecycle strategies, including safe PostgreSQL migration approaches.
- Work with product management, GitLab.com SRE, GitLab Dedicated and development teams to align deployment patterns with customer needs.
- Mentor engineers and enable customer facing teams through design reviews, code reviews, documentation and runbooks.
- Drive observability, testing, performance and resilience practice, and contribute to incident response and post incident learning.
What the first year looks like, per the posting: helping define the architecture for zero downtime upgrades, strengthening observability and reliability practice, and guiding the next generation of deployment automation for self managed environments.
Location and working pattern: all GitLab roles are remote, with some carrying location based eligibility requirements. This listing is open to India.
Honest fit guidance: this is the most senior of the four GitLab roles on today's board even though none of them state years. Kubernetes Operator authorship and stateful upgrade experience are the distinguishing requirements, and without them the rest of the list will not carry an application.
- Strong software engineering experience designing and delivering production systems that customers install and operate in their own infrastructure.
- Proficiency in Go for large, complex codebases, with familiarity with Ruby on Rails and Rails application architecture as a useful addition.
- Hands on production Kubernetes experience, including building and maintaining Operators, designing Helm charts for stateful applications, and working with Custom Resource Definitions, admission controllers and controller patterns.
- Knowledge of cloud native systems and tooling such as service mesh, observability stacks, infrastructure as code and automation tools like Terraform or Ansible.
- Experience with stateful workloads and databases, including PostgreSQL schema design and migrations, persistent volumes, storage classes and approaches for reducing downtime during upgrades.
- Understanding of Linux systems and production operations, including package management, systemd, system level debugging, observability, incident response and on call participation.
- The ability to guide through influence: clear technical proposals, documented decisions, mentoring and cross team work.
- Interest in open source infrastructure or deployment tooling, or transferable experience from adjacent domains.
What the work actually looks like:
- Guide the technical vision and architecture for GitLab's cloud native self managed deployments and upgrade workflows.
- Establish operational maturity standards, service integration patterns and deployment models.
- Design and maintain Kubernetes Operators, Helm charts and upgrade orchestration tooling.
- Develop automation and integration frameworks for database migrations, rolling deployments, compatibility checks and rollback paths.
- Define database and application lifecycle strategies, including safe PostgreSQL migration approaches.
- Work with product management, GitLab.com SRE, GitLab Dedicated and development teams to align deployment patterns with customer needs.
- Mentor engineers and enable customer facing teams through design reviews, code reviews, documentation and runbooks.
- Drive observability, testing, performance and resilience practice, and contribute to incident response and post incident learning.
What the first year looks like, per the posting: helping define the architecture for zero downtime upgrades, strengthening observability and reliability practice, and guiding the next generation of deployment automation for self managed environments.
Location and working pattern: all GitLab roles are remote, with some carrying location based eligibility requirements. This listing is open to India.
Honest fit guidance: this is the most senior of the four GitLab roles on today's board even though none of them state years. Kubernetes Operator authorship and stateful upgrade experience are the distinguishing requirements, and without them the rest of the list will not carry an application.
Apply on company site
Opens job-boards.greenhouse.io, the employer's own application page. Applying is always free.