Staff Forward Deployed Engineer at GitLab

Role overview

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

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.

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.

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 .

Responsibilities

• 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.

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.
• Directly relevant technologies and domains include:
• AI Engineering and Agentic SDLC
• GitLab CI/CD and Runner architecture
• Linux, networking, observability, and performance analysis
• DevSecOps governance, security, and compliance
• A generic field engineering role.
• 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.

Technology in this role

• Python: Python TypeScript Kubernetes Docker Linux .
• TypeScript: Python TypeScript Kubernetes Docker Linux .
• Kubernetes: Python TypeScript Kubernetes Docker Linux .
• Docker: Python TypeScript Kubernetes Docker Linux .
• Linux: Python TypeScript Kubernetes Docker Linux .
• Go: Python TypeScript Kubernetes Docker Linux .
• Rust: Listed by the employer as part of the role’s technical requirements.
• Ruby on Rails: Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability .
• Ruby: Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability .
• PostgreSQL: Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability .
• Redis: Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability .
• Terraform: Listed by the employer as part of the role’s technical requirements.
• Git: 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) .
• CI/CD: 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) .
• CAN: 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 .
• Rails: Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability .

Benefits

• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan

About GitLab

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.

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.

Browse job categories

Related jobs

• Forward Deployed Engineer - EMEA at GitLab — GitLab
• Forward Deployed Cloud Engineer, APAC at Runpod — Runpod
• Forward Deployed Engineer, EMEA at Runpod — Runpod
• Forward Deployed SRE at Andromeda — Andromeda
• Forward Deployed Engineer, AI and Agentic SDLC at GitLab — GitLab
• Forward Deployed Engineer at Kake — Kake