[Hiring] Distinguished Engineer @GitLab

Role Description

We are looking for a Distinguished Engineer to pioneer and scale autonomous, agentic SDLC capabilities across GitLab. Distinguished Engineers are recognized experts across multiple technology domains and represent the most senior level of technical leadership within and across divisions at the company.

In this role you will deeply immerse in GitLab's product and internal engineering workflows to:

• Identify classes of problems that can be wholly or largely addressed by AI agents.
• Validate them through rigorous experimentation in production-adjacent environments.
• Codify patterns that can be productized for our millions of users.

You will act as a bridge between Architecture, Product, Infrastructure, and Data and ML teams, ensuring that agentic capabilities deliver durable value internally first and then scale reliably and securely to our customers.

The level for this role will be determined through the interview process and may be scoped as either Distinguished Engineer or Fellow Engineer based on the depth and breadth of experience demonstrated.

What You'll Do

• Define and continuously refine a company-wide technical vision for autonomous, agentic SDLC that aligns with GitLab's product strategy and Engineering job architecture.
• Identify and prioritize non-linear productivity opportunities across the SDLC, targeting 10x step changes rather than incremental gains.
• Translate ambiguous problem spaces into concrete, iterable roadmaps in partnership with Product, AI and ML, and Architecture teams.
• Lead hands-on experiments and prototypes to validate where agentic workflows can reshape engineering tasks.
• Design and implement reference architectures for agentic SDLC inside GitLab.
• Define evaluation frameworks using offline benchmarks and online experiments to measure impact of agentic workflows.
• Select and own a small set of high-impact internal use cases as pathfinders.
• Work directly with engineering teams to embed agentic workflows into day-to-day development.
• Define and track core productivity metrics and link agentic interventions to real business outcomes.
• Capture and codify reusable patterns, libraries, and playbooks.
• Work with Product Management and Engineering leadership to convert proven internal patterns into product capabilities.
• Ensure designs respect multi-tenant, compliance, and data governance requirements.
• Serve as a point of escalation for complex technical and architectural decisions.
• Mentor Principal and Staff Engineers working on AI and agentic efforts.
• Write clear, opinionated design documents, architecture narratives, and decision records.
• Represent GitLab in the broader ecosystem at conferences and open source communities.
• Partner with Security and Compliance to define guardrails and monitoring for agentic features.
• Work with Reliability and SRE teams to ensure that agentic services are observable and resilient.

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in a senior technical leadership role.
• Deep expertise in AI and ML systems, including large language models and autonomous workflow design.
• Proven track record of leading hands-on technical experimentation.
• Strong background in scalable, multi-tenant distributed systems.
• Experience designing and implementing human-in-the-loop controls and responsible AI practices.
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross-functional alignment on complex technical challenges.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical direction.
• Ability to work effectively in a fully remote, globally distributed organization.
• Familiarity with GitLab's DevSecOps platform and the software development lifecycle is a strong plus.

Benefits

• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental Leave