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Senior Backend Engineer, Core DevOps: Container Registry

GitLab Remote, United Kingdom Full-time DevOps Engineering Posted Oct 15, 2026
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Culture signals in this specific role

Inferred from the employer’s wording in this job description. These role-level signals are separate from the company-wide employee-review scores below.

OwnershipThe description emphasizes ownership or end-to-end responsibility.
Cross-functionalThe role explicitly involves collaboration across teams or functions.
Deep technical workThe role highlights substantial technical, research, or systems work.
Operational responsibilityThe description includes production, reliability, or operational responsibility.
MentoringMentoring, coaching, or technical leadership is part of the role.

What it’s like to work at GitLab

DevSecOps Platform · All-Remote

3.9
Employee Rating
3.9
Work-Life Balance
239
Open Roles
remoteasynctransparentopen-source

What employees love

  • Best-in-class all-remote culture — truly async-first with genuine flexibility
  • Radically transparent company with a public handbook and open processes

What could be better

  • Revenue organization has seen quota chaos and low morale
  • Some leadership instability at the C-suite level
View full GitLab culture profile →

About the Role

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.

About the role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design, implement, and evolve product capabilities while solving high-scope backend problems and influencing the technical and product direction of our teams. You will move beyond "assigned work" to actively improve the quality, reliability, and performance of our systems. You will work across product, frontend, infrastructure, data, and security boundaries, making sound architectural trade-offs, communicating complex ideas clearly in an asynchronous environment, and helping define the standards for a high-scale, global product.

Why you’ll love this role

What you’ll do

  • Drive Technical Direction: Design and ship moderate to complex backend features with minimal guidance, making pragmatic choices between modular-monolith code, shared components, or independently operated services.
  • Raise the Bar: Advocate for product quality, security, availability, and performance. You will define backend standards for style, maintainability, testing, APIs, and operational readiness.
  • Mentor & Lead: Mentor associate and intermediate engineers, remove technical blockers, and improve team delivery practices through code and design reviews.
  • Operational Excellence: Diagnose and prevent performance/reliability issues at scale. Participate in incident response and act as a technical owner where appropriate.
  • AI Integration: Use AI in production engineering work to improve outcomes, evaluate its effectiveness, and coach others on responsible, high-judgment use.

What you’ll bring

  • Deep Backend Expertise: A strong command of backend architecture, APIs, data systems, and performance tuning in a complex product or service environment.
  • Adaptability: Proficiency in modern backend languages and a deep understanding of systems programming. We value the ability to learn and adapt over mastery of a single language.
  • Architectural Judgment: Experience designing or evolving modular backend boundaries, bounded contexts, and migration-safe architectures.
  • Influence: Ability to lead through influence, technical judgment, and clear written communication, effectively bridging the gap between product needs and technical reality.
  • Agentic AI Expertise: Proven experience building or operating agentic systems in production—moving beyond prompt engineering to architecting loops, tool-use, and error-handling strategies that ensure reliability at scale.

How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees

Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.


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.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the work-life balance like at GitLab?
GitLab has a work-life balance score of 3.9/5 based on employee reviews. This is about average for the AI/tech industry.
What is GitLab’s culture like?
GitLab is characterized by these culture values: remote, async, transparent, open-source. Based on employee reviews, the company has an overall rating of 3.9/5. Best-in-class all-remote culture — truly async-first with genuine flexibility
How many open roles does GitLab have?
GitLab currently has 239 open roles across departments including engineering, product, sales, and more. Roles are refreshed daily from their careers page.
Is this role remote-friendly?
This role is located in Remote, United Kingdom. GitLab is a remote-friendly company, with many roles available for remote work.
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