Distinguished Engineer, Core DevOps
Remote · USD 250,000-349,000 · 4+ years experience · Remote · Posted Sep 25, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 4+ years experience
- Workplace
- Remote
- Location
- Remote
- Salary
- USD 250,000-349,000 · Base salary
About the role
- The Distinguished Engineer will lead technical direction across GitLab's Core DevOps services, including CI, CD, Plan, and source control.
- This role involves driving architectural convergence, retiring technical debt, and integrating AI-native engineering practices into high-traffic, long-lived production systems.
- The position serves as a senior technical leader responsible for influencing engineering strategy, mentoring staff, and ensuring system quality at scale.
Responsibilities
- Set and refine technical direction for CI, CD, Plan, and source code experiences.
- Partner with the VP of Engineering on planning and technical investment strategies.
- Define and enforce measurable quality standards for availability, latency, and defect rates.
- Identify and retire systemic technical risks and single points of failure.
- Lead hands-on design decisions, including writing code, prototypes, and proofs of concept.
- Design migration paths for large-scale systems using incremental cutover and dual-run strategies.
- Adopt and integrate AI platform capabilities into Core DevOps workflows.
- Serve as an escalation point for complex or contested technical decisions.
- Review significant designs and merge requests to teach and raise technical standards.
- Participate in the Incident Management on-call rotation.
Requirements
- 10+ years of software engineering experience.
- 4+ years in a Staff, Principal, or equivalent senior technical leadership role.
- Deep expertise in AI and ML systems, including large language models and agentic frameworks.
- Proven track record of leading hands-on technical experimentation and benchmarking.
- Strong background in scalable, multi-tenant distributed systems.
- Experience designing human-in-the-loop controls and responsible AI practices.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing direction without direct authority.
- Ability to work effectively in a fully remote, globally distributed organization.
- Excellent written and asynchronous communication skills.
Benefits
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Team Member Resource Groups
- Equity Compensation
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Growth and Development Fund
- Parental Leave
Workplace
- Fully remote role.
Skills
- CI/CD
- Source Control
- Large Language Models
- Agentic Frameworks
- Distributed Systems
- Observability
- Fault Tolerance
- Service Decomposition
