Staff Forward Deployed Engineer
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.
* 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.
Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Agentic SDLC
An overview of this role
GitLab’s Forward Deployed Engineering team is a field-situated product engineering function focused on strategic customer outcomes, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, and direct contributions to GitLab’s product. This isn't a traditional field engineering, solutions architecture, or professional services role. As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work closely with customers while maintaining the technical standards and contribution discipline of a Staff-level product engineer.
You'll work where strategic customer urgency, complex technical ambiguity, and GitLab product execution intersect. You'll partner directly with strategic customers and teams across Product, Engineering, Support, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Solutions Architecture (SA), Customer Success Architecture (CSA), Customer Success Management (CSM), and Professional Services. You'll diagnose and resolve high-impact adoption blockers, contribute production-quality fixes and features, and turn what you learn into repeatable patterns for GitLab and its customers.
Why this role exists
Strategic customers sometimes encounter challenges that are too broad, deep, urgent, or cross-functional for any single team to own from start to finish. These challenges may involve product gaps, performance degradation, scale bottlenecks, AI governance, adoption blockers, architectural constraints, Git usage patterns, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) complexity, application programming interface (API) automation, security requirements, or operational instability.
Forward Deployed Engineering provides technical stewardship in these moments. The team doesn't simply observe, report, or escalate. You'll engage directly, diagnose the underlying technical problem, collaborate with the right teams, contribute code or technical solutions where appropriate, and transition the outcome into normal ownership once the customer is stable and the learning can be reused.
What you’ll do
Product contribution
Contribute production-quality code to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems.
Develop bug fixes, features, integrations, tooling, and performance improvements when strategic customer outcomes require direct engineering work.
Work within GitLab’s product and engineering processes, including issue discovery, merge request creation, testing, review, documentation, and maintainability.
Partner with Product and Engineering so customer-driven solutions support long-term product direction rather than becoming one-off customizations.
Turn blockers discovered in the field into durable product improvements, reference architectures, documentation, and repeatable implementation patterns.
Strategic technical stewardship
Engage with strategically important customers when adoption, retention, executive confidence, or public trust is materially at risk.
Diagnose complex problems across GitLab product behavior, customer architecture, Git internals, CI/CD workflows, API usage, observability, infrastructure, networking, and cloud environments.
Coordinate across Product, Engineering, SRE, Support, SA, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and customer technical teams to drive resolution from discovery through handoff.
Provide recommendations grounded in data, traces, and systems analysis to improve GitLab usage, workflows, automation, and architecture.
Create durable outcomes without establishing permanent dependency on Forward Deployed Engineering.
AI adoption and agentic software development lifecycle
Drive governed, measurable, and production-oriented adoption of GitLab Duo Agent Platform with strategic customers.
Identify and resolve AI adoption blockers involving governance, usage controls, auditability, security, compliance, operating models, workflow design, and integrations.
Develop customer-safe adoption patterns for the agentic software development lifecycle (SDLC), AI-assisted development, intent-based review, AI governance, and human-in-the-loop software delivery.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Field, and Customer Success teams to turn AI adoption learning into reusable guidance and product improvements.
Thought leadership
Create technical narratives grounded in customer experience and product reality that can help shape the industry’s approach.
Contribute to Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, reference architectures, technical strategy memos, and adoption frameworks.
Guide ideas through discovery, formulation, validation, amplification, and adoption across GitLab.
Partner with SA, CSA, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Product Marketing Management, CSM, Support, and executive stakeholders to make technical thought leadership a shared company capability.
What you’ll bring
Staff-level experience building, operating, or improving complex production software systems.
Experience contributing to large, mature product codebases with high standards for testing, maintainability, performance, and security.
Strong Ruby on Rails or Go experience and the ability to contribute directly to GitLab’s product and adjacent systems.
Experience with AI-assisted software development, agentic workflows, AI governance, model evaluation, context management, prompt and workflow design, or AI adoption in enterprise environments.
Experience diagnosing complex system behavior across application code, data stores, infrastructure, observability, networking, APIs, and customer usage patterns.
Deep knowledge of modern DevSecOps workflows, including Git, merge requests, CI/CD, security controls, compliance needs, and enterprise software delivery.
Experience working with strategic customers or senior technical stakeholders in ambiguous, high-impact situations.
The ability to coordinate across product, engineering, field, and customer teams without formal authority.
Strong written communication and sound judgment, including the ability to create technical narratives and distinguish reusable product work from customer-specific customization.
Strongly preferred qualifications
Direct experience with GitLab as a platform, including GitLab.com, GitLab Dedicated, or GitLab Self-Managed.
Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Vue, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, or observability tools.
Deep familiarity with Git internals, repository performance, large-scale Git usage patterns, or GitLab Runner behavior.
Experience creating technical thought-leadership materials, such as whitepapers, technical talks, architecture frameworks, requests for comments, public technical writing, or internal strategy documents.
A background in performance engineering, site reliability engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or distributed systems.
Experience working in open source or highly asynchronous engineering environments.
Technologies and domains
Directly relevant technologies and domains include:
Ruby on Rails
Go
AI-assisted development and the agentic SDLC
PostgreSQL
Redis and Sidekiq
Git internals
GitLab CI/CD and Runner architecture
Kubernetes and containers
Terraform
Linux, networking, observability, and performance analysis
Vue and TypeScript
APIs and automation
DevSecOps governance, security, and compliance
What this role is not
This role isn't:
A generic field engineering role.
A proof-of-concept factory.
A replacement for Solutions Architecture, Customer Success Architecture, Customer Success Management, Professional Services, Support, SRE, Product, or Engineering.
A customer-specific customization function.
Unbilled Professional Services.
A requirements-gathering role that only escalates to Product.
An AI evangelism role disconnected from product execution.
Success measures
Success in this role may include:
Stabilizing strategic customer adoption or retention risks.
Fixing product bugs or contributing features.
Removing AI adoption blockers for strategic accounts.
Creating reusable implementation patterns and transitioning them to long-term owners.
Producing or enabling Well-Architected Frameworks, whitepapers, webinars, or technical narratives.
Resolving cross-functional customer challenges without creating permanent dependency on Forward Deployed Engineering.
Equipping Product, Engineering, Support, CSA, CSM, Professional Services, and SA teams with better guidance based on learning from the field.
Increasing adoption and effective use of GitLab capabilities, especially GitLab Duo and GitLab Duo Agent Platform, in targeted accounts.
About the team
The Forward Deployed Engineering team connects strategic customer needs with GitLab product execution. The team works directly with customers and across GitLab to resolve complex adoption challenges, contribute durable product improvements, and create reusable technical guidance. Its goal is to stabilize urgent situations, improve the product, and transition ongoing ownership to the appropriate team rather than create a permanent dependency.
Ideal candidate profile
You're a Staff-level product or platform engineer who can operate in the field without becoming field-only. You're comfortable reading traces, writing production code, debugging architecture, discussing AI governance, leading a customer technical session, opening a merge request, outlining a whitepaper, and coordinating across teams to achieve a strategic customer outcome.
You're not simply a strong communicator with technical awareness. You're a credible engineer with the judgment, presence, and narrative ability to turn customer reality into product contributions, adoption guidance, and company-level thought leadership.
We welcome candidates with different backgrounds and levels of experience. Many successful candidates don't meet every qualification. If you're excited about this role, we encourage you to apply and let our recruiting team assess your application.
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
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