Staff Backend Engineer (Python), AI Engineering: Agent Foundations

GitLab is an open-core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating human progress. Our platform unites teams and organizations, breaking down barriers and redefining what's possible in software development. Thanks to products like Duo Enterprise and Duo Agent Platform, customers get AI benefits at every stage of the SDLC. 

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.

The Agent Foundations group is focused on developing GitLab the foundations of Agents and Flows, an AI system to automate tasks and help increase productivity in your development workflow.  

As our new Staff Backend Engineer, you’ll build out our core service written that not only hosts and coordinates our AI agents but also enables both teams inside and outside of GitLab to build their own agents. You’ll be leading efforts to make sure the service follows up-to-date best practices for Python web development and orchestrating the communication between different services via gRPC as well as contributing to the core AI functionality. As a Python engineer through and through you’ll spread your knowledge across a company where the main language is Ruby.

Some examples of our projects: 

• Duo Workflow Architecture
• Componentizing Duo Workflow Graph

What You’ll Do

• Write high-quality, efficient, and maintainable code while adhering to best practices and contributing to code reviews
• Build a highly scalable web platform based on Python and gRPC that can be deployed in different environments.
• Design and develop interactions with the latest LLMs.
• Contribute to a testing infrastructure that allows us to verify agentic AI behaviours.
• Embrace continuous learning and stay connected with industry best practices, tools, and technologies around AI to drive improvements in our software.
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to engineers across the Code Creation team and collaborate with other teams
• Influence product and engineering decisions by proposing thorough, iterative solutions to complex technical and architectural challenges
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across product, engineering, marketing, and more
• Represent the team in technical discussions with customers and stakeholders about AI-powered development capabilities
• Participate in Tier 2 or Tier 3 weekday, weekend, and/or occasional night on-call rotations to assist troubleshooting product operations, security operations, and urgent engineering issues.

What You’ll Bring

• A deep interest in the way AI will change the process of software development
• Multiple years of experience building Python Web Services in a multi-service environment ( e.g. FastAPI, Starlette)
• Proven ability to architect and lead complex technical projects from concept to production across distributed systems
• Strong experience with AI/ML technologies, including integration with large language models and understanding of prompt engineering
• Deep expertise in performance optimization, particularly for systems handling high-volume API requests
• Experience designing and building distributed systems with a focus on reliability, observability, and scalability
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical decisions and influence engineering strategy across multiple teams
• Experience mentoring engineers and raising the technical capabilities of a team
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for collaborating in a remote, globally distributed environment
• Ability to work effectively across different technology stacks and quickly learn new languages and frameworks as needed
• Experience with the gRPC framework is a plus.
• Experience with languages that our other services use such as Go, Typescript, Ruby or IDE Extension development is a plus.

About the team

The Agent Foundations group is a team distributed across 3 continents but unified by the desire to shape the future of software engineering. We’re hard at work creating a product and the infrastructure that changes development processes, building the tools of tomorrow.  

We’re partnering with teams both within the AI space as well as all over GitLab to ensure that Duo Agent Platform can become the backbone of many AI features at GitLab.

How GitLab will support you

• 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
• Home office support

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. 

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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.