Support Engineer

An overview of this role

As a Support Engineer on our U.S. Government Support Engineering team, you operate at the critical intersection of Support and Engineering, enabling public sector organizations and United States government agencies to run GitLab in some of the most secure and constrained environments in the world. Your work directly supports national security missions, including customers operating within FedRAMP-authorized, air-gapped, and classified or semi-classified environments where traditional troubleshooting approaches are not always possible.

In this role, you will engage deeply with GitLab through the command line; analyzing logs, system behavior, and application performance with strong Linux fundamentals and an understanding of how GitLab’s components interact end-to-end. You may partner with Product and Engineering to reproduce and document edge-case defects using sanitized or redacted data, or contribute directly to the product by opening merge requests that resolve customer-impacting issues. Beyond resolving individual cases, you’ll help strengthen GitLab by improving documentation, support workflows, and institutional knowledge, ensuring that lessons learned in highly regulated environments benefit the broader platform; all while working in a fully remote, highly collaborative environment built on trust, autonomy, and shared ownership.

Some examples of our projects:

• A tool to quickly analyze strace output
• A solution to capture the state of a customer’s server for easier troubleshooting
• A functionality to ChatOps to make it easier to identify user accounts on GitLab.com

What you’ll do

• Collaborate closely with public sector customers, including U.S. government agencies, the Department of War, and Intelligence Community organizations, to diagnose, troubleshoot, and resolve complex issues in GitLab deployments operating under strict security, compliance, and operational constraints.
• Perform deep, hands-on technical investigations using Linux command-line tooling and GitLab internals to analyze logs, system performance, and application behavior, often with limited telemetry or incomplete datasets. You will trace issues across infrastructure, application, and code paths to identify root causes, recommend mitigations, and drive durable fixes; frequently partnering with GitLab Product, Development, and Infrastructure teams to ensure outcomes that meet both mission and platform reliability requirements.
• Create and update clear, reusable documentation and support content based on real customer interactions to improve self-service and reduce repeated issues.
• Participate in regular pairing sessions with other Support Engineers and act as a stable counterpart to cross-functional teams to share knowledge and improve support processes.
• Contribute to building and refining internal support tools and workflows, including automation and troubleshooting utilities, to make diagnosing and resolving issues more efficient.
• Participate in weekday and weekend on-call rotations, providing timely emergency support for self-managed customers operating in restricted and compliance-focused environments.
• Support the growth of the team by reviewing applications and assessments, and participating in interviews and hiring decision discussions.

What you’ll bring

• Due to government security requirements, you must be a United States Citizen (defined as any individual who is a citizen of the United States by law, birth, or naturalization) to be eligible for this position
• Experience managing customer-facing cases across the full support lifecycle, from initial inquiry and triage through reproduction, escalation, and resolution
• Strong Linux systems administration knowledge, with the ability to troubleshoot performance and configuration issues in complex environments
• Familiarity with AI/LLM-powered developer tooling and gateway architectures (for example GitLab Duo, AI gateway configurations, or similar model-serving/proxy layers), including how they're deployed and troubleshot in self-managed or air-gapped environments
• Ability to use scripting languages (preferably Ruby or Bash) and work within model-view-controller frameworks (preferably Ruby on Rails) to investigate and resolve issues
• Practical experience with Git and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows
• Skill in creating and maintaining clear, accurate support content and technical documentation
• Ability to explain complex technical topics in a clear, empathetic way to customers and coworkers with varying technical backgrounds
• Familiarity with DevOps practices and container-orchestration technologies such as OpenShift and Kubernetes
• Understanding of common information security and compliance concepts and controls (for example DISA STIG and SELinux), and eligibility to work on United States federal customer environments as required for this role

About the team

At GitLab Federal, LLC, the U.S. Government Support Engineering team partners with public sector organizations and United States government agencies to support GitLab in highly secure, mission-critical environments. Our work directly enables national security outcomes, supporting customers across the Intelligence Community, Department of War, and other federal, state, and local government entities operating within regulated and restricted boundaries.

We are embedded within Support Engineering and work closely with Product, Development, Infrastructure, Customer Success, and Sales to solve complex, high-impact technical challenges. Our team frequently dives into code, logs, and architectural behavior to understand not just what is failing, but why; especially in environments with sanitized data, limited visibility, and strict compliance controls such as FedRAMP. We collaborate asynchronously across time zones and through structured pairing and discussion to share knowledge, strengthen solutions, and continuously improve how GitLab supports secure, air-gapped, and regulated deployments, while upholding GitLab's standards for rigor, transparency, and technical excellence.