Senior Backend Engineer, Analytics Instrumentation (Golang)

<div class="content-intro"><p>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.</p> <p>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&nbsp;and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuZIb5zszQI">Co-create the future with us</a> as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.</p> <p>*<em>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.</em></p></div><h2>An overview of this role</h2> <p>Analytics Instrumentation is part of the Data Engineering and Monetization (DE&amp;M) group, focused on the collection of Product Usage and Billing event data within GitLab. We build data collection platforms that enable product teams to assess user behavior and make evidence-based choices through privacy-conscious instrumentation that captures product usage throughout the user lifecycle.</p> <p>As a Senior Backend Engineer, you'll guide the design and development of a unified data infrastructure platform that consolidates analytics instrumentation across GitLab's engineering organization. You'll build and maintain backend systems that give the company visibility into customer usage patterns across GitLab SaaS and Self-Managed deployment environments. That data directly informs strategic product priorities and strategies. This role offers the opportunity to work on foundational infrastructure that simplifies instrumentation for teams at GitLab, replacing the complexity of multiple language-specific software development kits with a single, unified solution that teams can rely on.</p> <h2>What you’ll do</h2> <ul> <li value="1">Guide the design, implementation, and evolution of a unified data collection platform using Golang, Kubernetes, ClickHouse, and NATS, with success measured by reliability, performance, and adoption across GitLab teams.</li> <li value="2">Improve the emission, transit, and quality of instrumentation data across the system, with success measured by data quality, data integrity, and usage billing accuracy.</li> <li value="3">Provide technical guidance for usage billing and instrumentation systems during working hours, with success measured by timely incident handling, effective root cause analysis, and reliable service restoration.</li> <li value="4">Work across the organization with research and development teams and the enterprise data organization to deliver common solutions, with success measured by adoption across multiple stakeholders.</li> <li value="5">Make technical choices that balance ease of use for product teams with reliability and correctness for data consumers, with success measured by platform usability and reliable downstream data.</li> <li value="6">Mentor other engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and clear technical documentation, with success measured by stronger code quality, faster technical alignment, and more maintainable systems.</li> </ul> <h2>What you’ll bring</h2> <ul> <li value="1">Significant experience working with platform or infrastructure systems in production environments.</li> <li value="2">Strong proficiency in the Go programming language, with experience building and maintaining production services.</li> <li value="3">Strong backend development experience, with the ability to design and deliver scalable, reliable systems serving internal and external customers.</li> <li value="4">Experience guiding technical design and making tradeoffs across system reliability, performance at scale, data quality, and observability.</li> <li value="5">Experience working across team boundaries with product teams, data consumers, and other internal stakeholders.</li> <li value="6">Familiarity with cloud native technologies and open source development practices.</li> <li value="7">A track record of mentoring other engineers and helping teams make clear, well-documented technical choices.</li> </ul> <h2>About the team</h2> <p>The Analytics Instrumentation team operates at the intersection of Product, Analytics, and customer-facing teams, providing data collection infrastructure that serves engineering teams across GitLab. We're a distributed team of generalist engineers who tackle complex problems spanning the GitLab codebase, JavaScript, Go, and Python satellite services, data pipelines, and AI tool integration. We collaborate transparently across teams, deliver measurable results through efficient iteration, and build inclusive solutions that respect user privacy. Our work enables data-informed choices and planning across the organization. We're involved in diverse projects from event data collection and privacy compliance tools to AI-powered analytics frameworks that help GitLab teams learn more about their users.</p><div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description"><p><em>The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the&nbsp;United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US.&nbsp;Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, alignment with market data,&nbsp;and geographic location.&nbsp;The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. 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