GitLab

Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

🇺🇸 United States

$254,000 - $297,000

Full-time

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.

Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Agentic SDLC

An Overview of This Role

GitLab’s Forward Deployed Engineering team is a field-situated product engineering function focused on strategic customer outcomes, AI adoption, and direct contribution back to GitLab’s product. This is not a traditional field engineering, solutions architecture, or professional services role. The Staff Forward Deployed Engineer is expected to operate with deep customer proximity while maintaining the technical bar and contribution discipline of a Staff-level product engineer.

This role exists where strategic customer urgency, complex technical ambiguity, and GitLab product execution intersect. The Staff FDE will work directly with strategic customers, Product, Engineering, Support, SRE, SA, CSA, CSM, and Professional Services 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.

The ideal candidate is a Staff-level product or platform engineer with strong Ruby/Rails, Go, systems, DevSecOps, and AI adoption experience who can operate credibly in front of senior customer stakeholders while also contributing directly to GitLab’s core product.

Why This Role Exists

Strategic customers sometimes encounter challenges that are too broad, deep, urgent, or cross-functional for any single existing team to own end-to-end. These challenges may involve product gaps, performance degradation, scale bottlenecks, AI governance, adoption blockers, architectural constraints, Git usage patterns, CI/CD complexity, API automation, security requirements, or operational instability.

FDE provides technical stewardship in these moments. The team does not simply observe, report, or escalate. FDE engages directly, diagnoses the real technical problem, collaborates with the right internal teams, contributes code or technical solutions where appropriate, and transitions the outcome back into normal ownership once the customer is stabilized and the learning is reusable.

Core Responsibilities

Product Contribution

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.

Required Qualifications

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.

Strongly 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 / RailsGo (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

Experience with Java, .NET, or other enterprise application stacks may provide useful customer context, but is not a substitute for the ability to contribute directly to GitLab’s core product and adjacent systems.

What This Role Is Not

This role is not:

a generic field engineering role
a proof-of-concept factory
a replacement for SA, CSA, CSM, PS, Support, SRE, Product, or Engineering
a customer-specific customization function
unbilled Professional Services
a requirement-gathering role that only escalates to Product
an AI evangelism role disconnected from product execution

Success Measures

Success in this role may include:

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.

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

$254,000 - $297,000 USD

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.

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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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