---
title: 'Senior Backend Engineer, Database Excellence (Ruby) at GitLab'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-backend-engineer-database-excellence-ruby-gitlab-united-kingdom-96xbcwhfc9t4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Senior Backend Engineer, Database Excellence (Ruby) at GitLab

- **Company:** GitLab
- **Location:** United Kingdom
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-09
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/8778943002

## Job description

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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuZIb5zszQI) 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.

An overview of this role

As a Senior Backend Engineer with the [Database Excellence group](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/data-engineering/database-excellence/), you'll build and evolve the data frameworks and tooling that keep GitLab's application datastores scalable, healthy, and safe across both GitLab.com and thousands of self-managed instances. A primary focus for this role is building proactive data growth controls for GitLab.com, including retention and lifecycle management frameworks, enforcement of retention policies at schema-change time, and tooling that keeps database growth sustainable as AI-driven development accelerates how quickly data accumulates. You'll help teams across GitLab reason confidently about data architecture, placement, and lifecycle management, while proactively identifying saturation points in our GitLab.com infrastructure and driving corrective actions with partner teams. With the team's recent move into the Data Engineering organization, you'll also shape new scalability and data health features for self-managed customers, working hands-on with PostgreSQL and Ruby on Rails in a fully remote, highly collaborative environment.

Some examples of our projects:

- https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/work_items/22105
- [SQL Traffic Replay Tooling](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/17719)
- [Background Operations Framework](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/16152)

## What you'll do

- Develop and iterate backend features and data frameworks that make it safe and efficient for GitLab teams to work with data at scale across SaaS and self-managed deployments.
- Design and build data retention and lifecycle management frameworks, including retention policy enforcement, bulk data removal tooling, and automated identification of tables that need retention policies.
- Build shift-left guardrails, such as static analysis checks and schema-change-time enforcement, that catch unsustainable data growth patterns before they reach production.
- Collaborate closely with product management, UX, frontend, infrastructure, software delivery, and analytics teams to design and ship high-performing solutions
- Review and improve database-related changes from other engineers and community contributors, ensuring data integrity, safety, and performance across all deployment scenarios.
- Design, build, and maintain tooling such as SQL traffic replay and background operations frameworks to proactively surface and address scalability and performance issues.
- Research, design, and implement improvements to data retention and lifecycle management, database performance, scalability, and data health, including areas like soft delete strategies and database migration testing.
- Document database best practices, patterns to avoid, and data architecture guidance to enable developers to make informed decisions.
- Develop proactive tooling and guardrails that help developers detect and remediate potential performance and data issues early in the development lifecycle.

-

## What you'll bring

- Professional software engineering experience working with PostgreSQL in large, complex production environments, including high availability solutions with automatic failover and zero-downtime data migrations as well as managing large or fast-growing datasets through approaches such as data retention, archiving, partitioning, or lifecycle management.
- Proficiency with Ruby on Rails or another Ruby framework, including designing, implementing, and reviewing backend features.
- Ability to reason about software design, algorithms, and performance trade-offs at a system level.
- Strong written communication skills and comfort working asynchronously in an all-remote, distributed team.
- Self-directed work style with effective organizational skills and the ability to manage priorities as a "manager of one".
- Alignment with GitLab's values, including transparency, collaboration, inclusion, and contribution to open source.
- Openness to learning and applying new tools and approaches, including transferable experience from related data, infrastructure, or developer tooling domains.
- Willingness to participate in our [tier 2 dabase on-call rotation](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/data-engineering/database-excellence/#tier-2-on-call) in your time zone.

The [Database Excellence Group](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/data-engineering/database-excellence/) is a remote, agile backend team that builds and maintains the frameworks, patterns, and tooling that enable GitLab teams to work confidently with data at scale across all application datastores. As part of the broader Data Engineering organization, we focus on data scalability, health, and developer enablement for both GitLab.com and thousands of self-managed deployments, collaborating closely with infrastructure, software delivery, and analytics stages to ensure data changes are safe, performant, and compatible across diverse environments. We are independent, self-organized contributors, and we collaborate asynchronously across regions. We are currently expanding our mission from proactively identifying and addressing saturation points in GitLab.com infrastructure to also delivering scalability features and data health initiatives to self-managed customers. How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees

- [Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/benefits/general-and-entity-benefits/)
- [Flexible Paid Time Off](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/time-off-and-absence/time-off-types/#flexible-paid-time-off-pto)
- [Team Member Resource Groups](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/inclusion/tmrg-tmag/)
- [Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/stock-options/)
- [Growth and Development Fund](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/growth-and-development/)
- [Parental Leave](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/benefits/general-and-entity-benefits/#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](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/inclusion/#examples-of-select-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.

Privacy Policy: Please review our [Recruitment Privacy Policy.](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/candidate-faq/recruitment-privacy-policy/) Your privacy is important to us.

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](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-policies/inc-usa/#equal-employment-opportunity-policy) and [EEO is the Law](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/labor-and-employment-notices/#eeoc-us-equal-employment-opportunity-commission-notices). If you have a disability or special need that requires [accommodation](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-policies/inc-usa/#reasonable-accommodation), please let us know during the [recruiting process](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/interviewing/#adjustments-to-our-interview-process).

## About GitLab

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: GitLab provides an intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, enabling teams and AI agents to plan, build, secure, and deploy software faster.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NASDAQ: GTLB)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, CA, USA
- **Founded**: 2011
- **Founders**: Not explicitly listed in provided materials

## Core Business
- Primary industry: DevSecOps, Software Development Lifecycle Platform
- Target customers: Enterprise, SMB, B2B – used by over 100,000 organizations including large enterprises
- Mission / Purpose: "Unlock every team to ship trusted software at the speed of imagination"

## Products & Services
- **[GitLab Platform](https://about.gitlab.com/company/)**: Integrated DevSecOps/DevOps platform (SaaS and self-managed) covering source code management, CI/CD, security scanning, monitoring, and AI-powered features (e.g., Duo Agent).
- **GitLab Duo**: AI-powered suite of tools for code generation, review, and automation across the software lifecycle.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed in provided materials (public company – refer to NASDAQ: GTLB)
- **Key Metrics**: Over 50 million registered users, 2,500+ team members, 5,500+ code contributors, 2,500+ consecutive monthly releases (as of June 2026)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Public company; prior investors include Y Combinator (2015 cohort). Detailed list not provided.
- **Growth Signals**: 100,000+ organizations use GitLab; continuous monthly releases since 2011; expanding AI capabilities (Duo Agent); certification as Great Place to Work (US & India, 2026–2027)

## Competitive Advantages
- **All-in-one DevSecOps platform** that replaces multiple point tools, reducing complexity and toolchain friction.
- **Strong open-source heritage** and community-driven innovation (5,500+ contributors).
- **AI-first approach** with built-in agents for code generation, review, and security.
- **Culture of transparency** – handbook-first, public-by-default documentation that scales remote work.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI-powered software creation**: Deep integration of AI agents (Duo Agent) to accelerate development while maintaining security and compliance.
- **Enterprise adoption**: Scaling to meet the needs of large, regulated organizations with compliance and security features.
- **Remote-first operations**: Continuing to build and improve asynchronous, all-remote work culture as a competitive advantage.

## Why Work Here
- **Fully remote**: 100% remote company from the start – work from anywhere; asynchronous and flexible schedules.
- **Awards & recognition**: Great Place to Work Certified (US & India 2026–2027); BuiltIn Best Remote Places to Work 2026; Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology 2025.
- **Benefits**: Equity compensation, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, generous paid time off, annual growth & development benefit, access to LinkedIn Learning and leadership programs.
- **Inclusive culture**: Multiple Team Member Resource Groups, strong Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging (DIB) commitment.
- **Learning & development**: Industry-leading leadership programs and platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Level Up.

## Sources
1. [about.gitlab.com](https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/)
2. [about.gitlab.com/company](https://about.gitlab.com/company/)
3. [handbook.gitlab.com](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/employment-branding/content-library/)
4. [job-boards.greenhouse.io](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/8481958002)
5. [about.gitlab.com (homepage)](https://about.gitlab.com/)

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