Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Agentic SDLC

Details

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

The role addresses complex technical ambiguity, customer adoption blockers, product gaps, performance degradation, scale bottlenecks, AI governance, architectural constraints, Git usage patterns, CI/CD complexity, API automation, security requirements, and operational instability. The engineer works with strategic customers and cross-functional GitLab teams to diagnose problems, contribute production-grade fixes and features, and turn field learnings into reusable product improvements and implementation patterns.

Responsibilities

Product Contribution

• Contribute production-quality code to GitLab's product and adjacent systems.
• Develop bug fixes, features, integrations, tooling, and performance improvements.
• Follow GitLab's product and engineering processes, including issue discovery, merge request creation, testing, review, documentation, and maintainability practices.
• Influence Product and Engineering so customer-driven solutions align with long-term product direction rather than becoming one-off customizations.
• Translate customer-discovered blockers 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, APIs, observability, infrastructure, networking, cloud environments, and customer usage patterns.
• Coordinate across Product, Engineering, SRE, Support, SA, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and customer technical teams.
• Provide data-driven, trace-level, and systems-level recommendations for improving GitLab usage, workflows, automation, and architecture.
• Ensure FDE involvement creates durable outcomes without creating permanent dependency.

AI Adoption and Agentic SDLC

• Drive adoption of GitLab Duo Agent Platform with strategic customers in governed, measurable, production-oriented ways.
• Resolve AI adoption blockers involving governance, usage controls, auditability, security, compliance, operating models, 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 turn AI adoption learning into reusable guidance and product improvements.

Thought Leadership

• Create industry-focused technical narratives grounded in 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.

Requirements

• Staff-level experience building, operating, or improving complex production software systems.
• Ability to contribute to large, mature product codebases with high standards for testing, maintainability, performance, and security.
• Strong Ruby/Rails or Go experience, with the 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 requirements, 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 technical narratives, architecture guidance, and reusable field/product assets.
• Judgment to distinguish reusable product or platform work from customer-specific customization.

Preferred Qualifications and Technologies

• Experience with GitLab.com, GitLab Dedicated, or self-managed GitLab deployments.
• Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, and observability tooling.
• 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 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.
• Relevant technologies and domains include GitLab CI/CD and Runner architecture, Terraform, Linux, networking, observability, performance analysis, Vue, TypeScript, APIs, automation, DevSecOps governance, security, and compliance. Experience with Java, .NET, or other enterprise application stacks may provide customer context but does not replace the ability to contribute directly to GitLab's core product and adjacent systems.

Success Measures

• Strategic customer adoption or retention risks stabilized.
• Product bugs fixed and 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 permanent FDE dependency.
• Product, Engineering, Support, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, 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.

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 roles are remote, with some roles carrying specific location-based eligibility requirements. The listed base salary range applies to residents of the United States and excludes bonuses, equity, and benefits.