Distinguished Engineer, Agentic SDLC & Non-Linear Productivity

Details

GitLab is seeking a Distinguished Engineer to pioneer and scale autonomous, agentic software development lifecycle capabilities across the company. Distinguished Engineers are recognized experts across multiple technology domains and represent the most senior level of technical leadership within and across divisions. The role may be scoped as either Distinguished Engineer or Fellow Engineer based on the candidate's experience and interview evaluation.

The position focuses on identifying engineering problems that can be addressed by AI agents, validating solutions through rigorous experimentation, and codifying patterns that can be productized for GitLab's users. The role bridges Architecture, Product, Infrastructure, and Data and ML teams to deliver secure, observable, and durable agentic capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Define and continuously refine GitLab's company-wide technical vision for autonomous, agentic SDLC capabilities.
• Identify and prioritize non-linear productivity opportunities across planning, coding, code review, security, compliance, and operations, targeting 10x improvements.
• Translate ambiguous problem spaces into iterative roadmaps with Product, AI and ML, and Architecture teams.
• Lead hands-on experiments and prototypes for autonomous merge request authoring, test creation and triage, security remediation, release readiness, and incident response.
• Design and implement reference architectures for agentic SDLC, including orchestration patterns, safety guardrails, observability, and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Define evaluation frameworks using offline benchmarks and online experiments to measure correctness, latency, safety, cost, and productivity impact.
• Own high-impact internal use cases from concept through adoption and measurable productivity gains.
• Embed trusted, observable, and resilient agentic workflows into engineering teams' daily development processes.
• Define and track productivity metrics such as cycle time, mean time to resolution (MTTR), and merge request throughput.
• Codify reusable patterns, libraries, and playbooks for adoption across teams.
• Convert proven internal patterns into product capabilities that can be safely and reliably offered to customers.
• Ensure designs meet multi-tenant, compliance, and data governance requirements across GitLab.com and self-managed customers.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex technical and architectural decisions involving agentic workflows, AI safety, and large-scale systems integration.
• Mentor Principal and Staff Engineers working on AI and agentic initiatives.
• Write design documents, architecture narratives, and decision records.
• Represent GitLab in conferences, standards groups, and open source communities on AI-assisted development, autonomous agents, and productivity measurement.
• Partner with Security, Compliance, Reliability, and SRE teams on guardrails, monitoring, observability, debuggability, resilience, and graceful failure handling.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in a Staff, Principal, or equivalent senior technical leadership role.
• Deep expertise in AI and ML systems, including large language models, agentic frameworks, and autonomous workflow design at production scale.
• Proven experience leading hands-on technical experimentation, defining evaluation frameworks, running benchmarks, and translating findings into scalable architecture decisions.
• Strong background in scalable, multi-tenant distributed systems, including service decomposition, fault tolerance, observability, and operational resilience.
• Experience designing and implementing human-in-the-loop controls, safety guardrails, and responsible AI practices for production systems.
• Demonstrated ability to align Engineering, Product, Infrastructure, and Data and ML teams around complex and ambiguous technical challenges.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical direction across multiple teams or divisions without direct authority.
• Excellent written and asynchronous communication skills and the ability to work effectively in a fully remote, globally distributed organization.
• Familiarity with GitLab's DevSecOps platform, CI/CD primitives, and the software development lifecycle is a strong plus.

Benefits

• Benefits supporting health, finances, and well-being.
• Flexible paid time off.
• Team Member Resource Groups.
• Equity compensation and Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
• Growth and Development Fund.
• Parental leave.
• GitLab is an equal opportunity workplace and supports workplace accommodations during the recruiting process.