# Staff Forward Deployed Engineer **Company**: GitLab **Location**: Remote, US **Work arrangement**: remote **Experience**: staff **Job type**: full-time **Salary**: $254,000-$297,000 USD **Category**: Engineering **Industry**: Technology **Apply**: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/8512432002?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply **Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_91a86e57-0ae ## Description GitLab is seeking a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer to join their team. This role involves working directly with strategic customers, Product, Engineering, Support, and other teams to diagnose and resolve high-impact adoption blockers, contribute production-grade fixes and features, and convert learning into repeatable patterns for GitLab and its customers. **Core Responsibilities:** - Contribute production-quality code to GitLab's product and adjacent systems. - Develop bug fixes, features, integrations, tooling, or performance improvements where strategic customer outcomes require direct engineering contribution. - Work within GitLab's normal product and engineering processes, including issue discovery, MR creation, testing, review, documentation, and maintainability. - Influence Product and Engineering to ensure customer-driven solutions align with long-term product direction and do not become one-off customizations. - Translate field-discovered blockers into durable product improvements, reference architectures, documentation, or repeatable implementation patterns. **Strategic Technical Stewardship:** - Engage with strategically important customers when adoption, retention, executive confidence, or public trust is materially at risk. - Diagnose complex technical problems across GitLab product behavior, customer architecture, Git internals, CI/CD workflows, API usage, observability, infrastructure, networking, and cloud environments. - Coordinate across Product, Engineering, SRE, Support, SA, CSA, CSM, PS, and customer technical teams to drive end-to-end resolution. - Provide data-driven, trace-level, systems-level recommendations for improving GitLab usage, workflows, automation, and architecture. - Ensure FDE involvement creates durable outcomes rather than permanent dependency. **AI Adoption and Agentic SDLC:** - Drive adoption of GitLab Duo Agent Platform with strategic customers in governed, measurable, production-oriented ways. - Identify and resolve blockers to AI adoption, including governance, usage controls, auditability, security, compliance, operating model, workflow design, and integration gaps. - Develop customer-safe adoption patterns for agentic SDLC, AI-assisted development, intent-based review, AI governance, and human-in-the-loop software delivery. - Partner with Product, Engineering, Field, and Customer Success to translate AI adoption learning into reusable guidance and product improvements. **Thought Leadership:** - Lead GitLab in creating industry-shaping technical narratives grounded in real customer experience and product reality. - Contribute to Well Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, reference architectures, technical strategy memos, and adoption frameworks. - Steward ideas from discovery through formulation, validation, amplification, and normalization across the company. - Partner with SA, CSA, Product, Engineering, Marketing, PMM, CSM, Support, and executive stakeholders to make thought leadership a company capability rather than an isolated team activity. **Requirements:** - Staff-level experience building, operating, or improving complex production software systems. - Demonstrated ability to contribute to large, mature product codebases with high standards for testing, maintainability, performance, and security. - Strong Ruby/Rails or Go experience, with ability to contribute directly to GitLab's product contribution surface. - Experience diagnosing complex system behavior across application code, data stores, infrastructure, observability, networking, APIs, and customer usage patterns. - Deep understanding of modern DevSecOps workflows, including Git, merge requests, CI/CD, security controls, compliance needs, and enterprise software delivery. - Experience working with strategic customers or senior technical stakeholders in ambiguous, high-impact situations. - Ability to coordinate across Product, Engineering, Support, SRE, SA, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and customer teams without formal authority. - Strong written communication skills, including the ability to produce technical narratives, architecture guidance, and reusable field/product assets. - Demonstrated judgment in distinguishing reusable product/platform work from customer-specific customization. **Preferred Qualifications:** - Direct experience with GitLab as a platform, including GitLab.com, Dedicated, or self-managed deployments. - Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, and observability tooling. - Deep familiarity with Git internals, repository performance, large-scale Git usage patterns, or CI runner behavior. - Experience with AI-assisted software development, agentic workflows, AI governance, model evaluation, context management, prompt/workflow design, or AI adoption in regulated enterprise environments. - Experience creating thought-leadership artifacts such as whitepapers, technical talks, architecture frameworks, RFCs, public technical writing, or internal strategy documents. - Background in performance engineering, SRE, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or distributed systems. - Experience working in open-source or highly asynchronous engineering environments. **Technologies and Domains:** Directly relevant technologies include: - Ruby / Rails - Go (GoLang) - AI-assisted development and agentic SDLC - PostgreSQL - Redis / Sidekiq - Git internals - GitLab CI/CD and Runner architecture - Kubernetes and containers - Terraform - Linux, networking, observability, and performance analysis - Vue / TypeScript - APIs and automation - DevSecOps governance, security, and compliance **Success Measures:** - Strategic customer adoption or retention risks stabilized. - Product bugs fixed or features contributed. - AI adoption blockers removed for strategic accounts. - Reusable implementation patterns created and handed off. - Well Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, or technical narratives produced or enabled. - Cross-functional customer challenges resolved without creating permanent FDE dependency. - Product, Engineering, Support, CSA, CSM, PS, and SA teams equipped with better guidance from field-discovered learning. - Increased adoption and effective usage of GitLab capabilities, especially GitLab Duo and Duo Agent Platform, in targeted accounts. **Ideal Candidate Profile:** The ideal candidate is a Staff-level product or platform engineer who can operate in the field without becoming 'field only.' They are equally comfortable reading traces, writing production code, debugging architecture, discussing AI governance, leading a customer technical session, opening a merge request, writing a whitepaper outline, and coordinating across internal teams to achieve a strategic customer outcome. They are not simply a strong communicator with technical awareness. They are a deeply credible engineer with the judgment, presence, and narrative ability required to turn customer reality into product contribution, adoption guidance, and company-level thought leadership. **Salary Range:** $254,000-$297,000 USD ## Skills ### Required - Ruby/Rails - Go - DevSecOps - AI adoption - GitLab - CI/CD - API automation - security requirements - operational instability ### Nice to have - GitLab.com - Dedicated - self-managed deployments - PostgreSQL - Redis - Sidekiq - Vue - TypeScript - Kubernetes - Docker - Linux - observability tooling --- Source: [Apply at job-boards.greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/8512432002?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)