Intermediate Backend Engineer - Database Change Management
About the job
- Professional software engineering experience working with PostgreSQL in large, complex production environments, including schema migrations and performance tuning.
- Proficiency with Ruby on Rails, with experience designing, implementing, and reviewing backend features and services.
- Ability to reason about software design, algorithms, and system-level trade-offs, particularly regarding reliability, safety, and backward compatibility in production upgrades.
- Strong written communication skills and comfort working asynchronously in an all-remote, distributed team.
- A 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, teamwork, inclusion, and contribution to open source practices.
- Experience working with operations or infrastructure teams, or willingness to learn how to effectively work across organizational boundaries.
- Build and test the system that safely applies database schema changes during upgrades for both GitLab.com and self-managed customers.
- Develop and maintain testing frameworks that validate schema changes before they reach production.
- Implement checks and safeguards that catch problems before upgrades run, preventing failed or slow upgrades for customers.
- Review and improve database schema migrations from other engineers and external contributors to ensure safety, consistency, and backward compatibility.
- Work cross-functionally with operations, packaging, distribution, and quality assurance teams to ensure the upgrade experience is reliable and smooth for all customers.
- Document upgrade procedures, schema change patterns, and migration best practices to help other engineers work with and maintain the system.
- Work with operations teams to identify their needs and continuously improve the safety and speed of customer upgrades, with success measured by fewer failed or slow upgrades and a more reliable upgrade experience.
- Ship incremental improvements and, over time, take ownership of larger pieces of work with shorter revision cycles.
About the company
GitLab provides a unified DevOps platform that brings together the tools needed for software development, including code hosting, collaboration, CI/CD, issue tracking, and security, all in one application. It works by offering a single subscription-based platform where teams can plan, write, test, review, and deploy code through automated pipelines, reducing the need to manage separate tools. This differs from many competitors that require using a collection of separate products; GitLab consolidates these capabilities into one integrated solution, helping teams work more efficiently. The company’s goal is to help organizations speed up software delivery and improve collaboration by simplifying the DevOps process and continuously updating the platform with new features and improvements.
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
IPO
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2014
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- September 2026 revenue hit $286.3 million, up 21%, with record gross bookings.
- Net ARR grew 42% and first orders doubled in GitLab’s latest quarter.
- GitLab Flex committed over $20 million in six weeks, validating hybrid consumption pricing.
What critics are saying
- June 2026 layoffs cut 14% and exited 22 countries, disrupting execution.
- Microsoft GitHub and Atlassian own adjacent developer workflows, pressuring GitLab’s platform consolidation.
- If Duo monetization stalls, AI spending becomes a cost center before FY2027 growth slows.
What makes GitLab unique
- GitLab 19.4 unifies agentic automation across CI, security, merge requests, and projects.
- GitLab Duo Agent Platform ships with governed, local, traceable AI inside enterprise workflows.
- GitLab’s single-application DevSecOps stack keeps code, security, and compliance context together.
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Benefits
Spending Company Money
Equity Compensation
Life Insurance
Financial Wellness
Paid Time Off
Growth and Development Benefit
GitLab Contribute
Business Travel Accident Policy
Immigration
Employee Assistance Program
Incentives
All-Remote
Part-time contracts
Meal Train
Fertility & Family Planning
Parental Leave
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 0%1 year growth
↑ 0%2 year growth
↑ 0%GitLab reported Q2 revenues of $286.3 million, up 21.3% year-on-year and exceeding analyst expectations by 4.8%. The company delivered strong billings results and EPS guidance for the next quarter. Chief executive officer Bill Staples highlighted record gross bookings and net annual recurring revenue growth exceeding 40% year-on-year. He noted that as AI drives more software creation, GitLab's platform provides increasingly valuable context, security, governance, and control for human and AI agent collaboration. The DevSecOps platform provider's shares rose 3.3% following the earnings announcement. The quarter was part of a strong performance across the software development sector, where 12 tracked companies collectively beat revenue estimates by 3.2%. GitLab operates with an all-remote workforce and provides tools helping development, operations, and security teams collaborate to build and deploy software.
GitLab went public in October 2021 at $77 per share, valuing the company at roughly $11 billion. Sound Ventures, the investment firm co-founded by Ashton Kutcher, backed GitLab six years earlier during its $1.5 million seed round in July 2015. Khosla Ventures led that early financing, with Joe Montana's Liquid 2 Ventures also participating. At the time, GitLab had fewer than 10 team members and was still developing its software development collaboration tools. GitLab's shares closed at $103.89 on their first trading day, giving the company a market value of $14.9 billion, according to Reuters. However, neither GitLab nor Sound Ventures disclosed the size of the firm's investment or when shares were sold, making it impossible to calculate Kutcher's actual return.
GitLab has released version 19.4, introducing agentic automation tools alongside Model Context Protocol server tools in public beta under its GitLab Duo Agent Platform. The new tools allow agents to automate tasks across continuous integration and continuous delivery, merge requests, work items, vulnerabilities, and projects, all governed by tool-level rules. GitLab has made its Credits usage visibility feature generally available. The company also announced that its new GitLab-hosted open-weight models can deliver up to four times more calls per credit whilst maintaining performance comparable to frontier models.
GitLab reported third-quarter results that exceeded expectations, with shares rising following the announcement. The DevSecOps company's new annual recurring revenue surged 42% year-over-year, its second-highest rate in four years. Calculated billings jumped 24%, double the previous quarter's growth rate. First-order count more than doubled to 1,700, whilst first-order ARR rose 39%. Dollar-based net retention remained strong at 117% over 12 months, showing the first sequential improvement since 2024. Overall revenue increased 21% year-over-year to $286.3 million, surpassing guidance of $272 million to $274 million. Subscription revenue grew 21% to $258.3 million, whilst licence revenue rose 20% to $27.9 million. The company recently launched its Flex model, allowing customers to shift between seats, consumption credits, and new capabilities. Within six weeks, customers committed over $20 million to the programme.
GitLab reported Q2 revenue of $286.3 million, up 21% year over year, and raised its full-year outlook to $1.129 billion–$1.133 billion. Non-GAAP operating income reached $42.6 million, whilst net annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth accelerated 42%. First orders more than doubled to approximately 1,700, and deals worth at least $500,000 increased over 150%. Dollar-based net retention improved to 117%, marking the first sequential increase since 2024. More than 130 customers committed over $20 million to GitLab Flex within six weeks, helping paid consumption run rate exceed $40 million. The company increased account executive capacity by roughly 30% year over year, with productivity per representative improving about 10%.