Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

AN OVERVIEW OF THIS ROLE

GitLab’s Forward Deployed Engineering team is a field-situated product engineering function focused on strategic customer outcomes, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, and direct contributions to GitLab’s product. This isn't a traditional field engineering, solutions architecture, or professional services role. As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work closely with customers while maintaining the technical standards and contribution discipline of a Staff-level product engineer.

You'll work where strategic customer urgency, complex technical ambiguity, and GitLab product execution intersect. You'll partner directly with strategic customers and teams across Product, Engineering, Support, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Solutions Architecture (SA), Customer Success Architecture (CSA), Customer Success Management (CSM), and Professional Services. You'll diagnose and resolve high-impact adoption blockers, contribute production-quality fixes and features, and turn what you learn into repeatable patterns for GitLab and its customers.

WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS

Strategic customers sometimes encounter challenges that are too broad, deep, urgent, or cross-functional for any single team to own from start to finish. These challenges may involve product gaps, performance degradation, scale bottlenecks, AI governance, adoption blockers, architectural constraints, Git usage patterns, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) complexity, application programming interface (API) automation, security requirements, or operational instability.

Forward Deployed Engineering provides technical stewardship in these moments. The team doesn't simply observe, report, or escalate. You'll engage directly, diagnose the underlying technical problem, collaborate with the right teams, contribute code or technical solutions where appropriate, and transition the outcome into normal ownership once the customer is stable and the learning can be reused.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

PRODUCT CONTRIBUTION

• Contribute production-quality code to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems.
• Develop bug fixes, features, integrations, tooling, and performance improvements when strategic customer outcomes require direct engineering work.
• Work within GitLab’s product and engineering processes, including issue discovery, merge request creation, testing, review, documentation, and maintainability.
• Partner with Product and Engineering so customer-driven solutions support long-term product direction rather than becoming one-off customizations.
• Turn blockers discovered in the field into durable product improvements, reference architectures, documentation, and 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 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, Professional Services, and customer technical teams to drive resolution from discovery through handoff.
• Provide recommendations grounded in data, traces, and systems analysis to improve GitLab usage, workflows, automation, and architecture.
• Create durable outcomes without establishing permanent dependency on Forward Deployed Engineering.

AI ADOPTION AND AGENTIC SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE

• Drive governed, measurable, and production-oriented adoption of GitLab Duo Agent Platform with strategic customers.
• Identify and resolve AI adoption blockers involving governance, usage controls, auditability, security, compliance, operating models, workflow design, and integrations.
• Develop customer-safe adoption patterns for the agentic software development lifecycle (SDLC), AI-assisted development, intent-based review, AI governance, and human-in-the-loop software delivery.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Field, and Customer Success teams to turn AI adoption learning into reusable guidance and product improvements.

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

• Create technical narratives grounded in customer experience and product reality that can help shape the industry’s approach.
• Contribute to Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, reference architectures, technical strategy memos, and adoption frameworks.
• Guide ideas through discovery, formulation, validation, amplification, and adoption across GitLab.
• Partner with SA, CSA, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Product Marketing Management, CSM, Support, and executive stakeholders to make technical thought leadership a shared company capability.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• Staff-level experience building, operating, or improving complex production software systems.
• Experience contributing to large, mature product codebases with high standards for testing, maintainability, performance, and security.
• Strong Ruby on Rails or Go experience and the ability to contribute directly to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems.
• Experience with AI-assisted software development, agentic workflows, AI governance, model evaluation, context management, prompt and workflow design, or AI adoption in enterprise environments.
• Experience diagnosing complex system behavior across application code, data stores, infrastructure, observability, networking, APIs, and customer usage patterns.
• Deep knowledge 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.
• The ability to coordinate across product, engineering, field, and customer teams without formal authority.
• Strong written communication and sound judgment, including the ability to create technical narratives and distinguish reusable product work from customer-specific customization.

STRONGLY PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Direct experience with GitLab as a platform, including GitLab.com, GitLab Dedicated, or GitLab Self-Managed.
• Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability tools.
• Deep familiarity with Git internals, repository performance, large-scale Git usage patterns, or GitLab Runner behavior.
• Experience creating technical thought-leadership materials, such as whitepapers, technical talks, architecture frameworks, requests for comments, public technical writing, or internal strategy documents.
• A background in performance engineering, site reliability engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or distributed systems.
• Experience working in open source or highly asynchronous engineering environments.

TECHNOLOGIES AND DOMAINS

Directly relevant technologies and domains include:

• Go, Rust or Python
• AI Engineering and Agentic SDLC
• PostgreSQL
• Redis and Sidekiq
• Git internals
• GitLab CI/CD and Runner architecture
• Kubernetes and containers
• Terraform
• Linux, networking, observability, and performance analysis
• Vue and TypeScript
• APIs and automation
• DevSecOps governance, security, and compliance
• Ruby on Rails

WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT

This role isn't:

• A generic field engineering role.
• A proof-of-concept factory.
• A replacement for Solutions Architecture, Customer Success Architecture, Customer Success Management, Professional Services, Support, SRE, Product, or Engineering.
• A customer-specific customization function.
• Unbilled Professional Services.
• A requirements-gathering role that only escalates to Product.
• An AI evangelism role disconnected from product execution.

SUCCESS MEASURES

Success in this role may include:

• Stabilizing strategic customer adoption or retention risks.
• Fixing product bugs or contributing features.
• Removing AI adoption blockers for strategic accounts.
• Creating reusable implementation patterns and transitioning them to long-term owners.
• Producing or enabling Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, or technical narratives.
• Resolving cross-functional customer challenges without creating permanent dependency on Forward Deployed Engineering.
• Equipping Product, Engineering, Support, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and SA teams with better guidance based on learning from the field.
• Increasing adoption and effective use of GitLab capabilities, especially GitLab Duo and GitLab Duo Agent Platform, in targeted accounts.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Forward Deployed Engineering team connects strategic customer needs with GitLab product execution. The team works directly with customers and across GitLab to resolve complex adoption challenges, contribute durable product improvements, and create reusable technical guidance. Its goal is to stabilize urgent situations, improve the product, and transition ongoing ownership to the appropriate team rather than create a permanent dependency.

IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE

You're a Staff-level product or platform engineer who can operate in the field without becoming field-only. You're comfortable reading traces, writing production code, debugging architecture, discussing AI governance, leading a customer technical session, opening a merge request, outlining a whitepaper, and coordinating across teams to achieve a strategic customer outcome.

You're not simply a strong communicator with technical awareness. You're a credible engineer with the judgment, presence, and narrative ability to turn customer reality into product contributions, adoption guidance, and company-level thought leadership.

We welcome candidates with different backgrounds and levels of experience. Many successful candidates don't meet every qualification. If you're excited about this role, we encourage you to apply and let our recruiting team assess your application.

The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. 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, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. 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.

United States Salary Range $220,000—$270,000 USD

HOW GITLAB SUPPORTS FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental Leave

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.

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