Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), AI Engineering: AI Coding

Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), AI Engineering: AI Coding

Full-Time 60000 - 80000 £ / year (est.) Working from home possible
GitLab

At a Glance

  • Tasks: Design and build AI-powered trigger systems for GitLab events.
  • Company: Join GitLab, a leading open core software company transforming DevSecOps.
  • Benefits: Enjoy flexible paid time off, equity compensation, and growth opportunities.
  • Other info: Work remotely in a dynamic, async-first team culture.
  • Why this job: Be at the forefront of AI innovation and make a real impact.
  • Qualifications: Experience with Ruby, Rails, and building scalable systems.

The predicted salary is between 60000 - 80000 £ per year.

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.

An overview of this role: GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, and more than 100,000 organizations use it. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. We make this possible by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values. The AI Events team builds the event platform and trigger system that power GitLab Duo Flows, enabling them to run automatically in response to events across the development lifecycle. The platform handles internal GitLab events like code pushes, issue and merge request changes, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline results, and deployments, as well as custom events from third-party tools like Jira, Jenkins, and Slack. Flow Triggers link projects to flows, firing automatically when matching events occur, so that AI-powered workflows like automated code review can run without anyone lifting a finger.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll join a small, close-knit team that maintains infrastructure that many of GitLab's AI features rely on. You'll likely spend much of your time on the triggers side of the platform, linking events across GitLab and third-party tools to the AI workflows that act on them. This part of the system needs to handle significant scale and stay highly available, since it's core to automated AI-enabled work across the platform.

What you’ll do:

  • Design and build the trigger system that links GitLab events, including code pushes, merge request and issue changes, CI/CD results, and deployments, and third-party events from tools like Jira, Jenkins, and Slack to the AI-powered Duo Flows that act on them.
  • Contribute to the broader event platform, the core infrastructure that many of GitLab's AI features rely on to know when and how to run.
  • Architect for high availability and throughput, since this part of the system sits at the center of automated AI workflows across GitLab and needs to reliably process events at scale.
  • Work within GitLab's Rails monolith, where much of the event and trigger system lives, while staying open to other languages used elsewhere in the platform.
  • Influence product and architecture direction by proposing iterative solutions to complex technical problems across a multi-service environment.
  • Collaborate closely with your teammates, product manager, and designer to shape what the trigger system supports next, likely starting with an additional trigger type.
  • Partner cross-departmentally with other Duo Agent Platform teams to make sure triggers and events integrate cleanly with the broader agent ecosystem GitLab is building.
  • Participate in Tier 2 and Tier 3 on-call rotations to troubleshoot production, security, and urgent engineering issues in a globally distributed environment.

What you’ll bring:

  • Deep experience with Ruby and Rails, comfortable working within a large, established monolith and shipping production code effectively.
  • Proven track record building products that interact with large language models, not training or building machine learning models yourself, but with hands-on experience integrating large language models into real, user-facing tools.
  • Proven track record designing and operating systems built for large scale, with a focus on high availability and throughput in production environments.
  • Hands-on experience with agentic systems and development, including building workflows that let AI agents take autonomous action.
  • Demonstrated ability to make progress in evolving problem spaces and learn new AI capabilities quickly as the underlying technology shifts fast and this team ships while it learns.
  • Strong written communication skills for working asynchronously in a remote, globally distributed team.
  • Additional helpful experience includes Python, since other parts of GitLab's AI platform are built in it, and using GitLab as a product.

About the team:

We're part of GitLab's AI Engineering organization. We're a small team with members based in Europe, and we're growing. We work closely with our manager, product manager, and designer, and we coordinate cross-departmentally with other AI Engineering teams, since GitLab's AI teams work closely together. We operate async-first, communicating through GitLab issues and Slack, with async standups and regular one-on-ones. We value autonomy and ownership, giving engineers the authority to make decisions and move quickly, balanced with high context sharing across the group. AI is a top priority at GitLab, and we work on cutting-edge technology in a high-impact, high-visibility part of the company.

Remote-Global

How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees:

  • Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
  • Flexible Paid Time Off
  • Team Member Resource Groups
  • Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
  • Growth and Development Fund
  • 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 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. 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.

Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), AI Engineering: AI Coding employer: GitLab

At GitLab, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer that fosters a collaborative and innovative work culture. As a Site Reliability Engineer, you will have access to extensive growth opportunities, working alongside experienced professionals in a dynamic environment that values your contributions. Our commitment to employee well-being and development, combined with the chance to work on cutting-edge technology in a supportive atmosphere, makes GitLab a truly rewarding place to advance your career.

GitLab

Contact Details:

GitLab Recruitment Team

StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫

We think this is how you could land Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), AI Engineering: AI Coding

Join Local Tech Meetups

Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at GitLab or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!

Contribute to Open Source Projects

Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to GitLab.

Tap into Online Developer Communities

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We think you need these skills to ace Senior Backend Engineer (Ruby), AI Engineering: AI Coding

Ruby
Rails
AI Integration
High Availability Systems
Event-Driven Architecture
CI/CD Pipelines
Problem-Solving Skills

Some tips for your application 🫡

Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.

Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at GitLab.

Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at GitLab and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!

Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!

How to prepare for a job interview at GitLab

Brush Up on Your Coding Skills

For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.

Know Your Tools and Frameworks

Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If GitLab uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.

Showcase Your Projects

Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.

Prepare for Behavioural Questions

While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.