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.
CX Forward Deployed Engineer
An overview of this role
As a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer at GitLab, you will help close the gap between what the GitLab platform and GitLab Duo Agent Platform can do and what strategic customers can activate today. You will work directly with customers, GitLab account teams, and GitLab product and engineering teams as a consultative engineering partner to accelerate adoption in complex, high-value environments. This is a deeply technical, customer-facing role where you will use strong engineering judgment to decide whether the right answer is platform configuration, accelerator tooling, reference architecture, or a strategic contribution back to the core product.
In this role, you will focus on making customer progress repeatable. That means turning real-world adoption challenges into reusable assets, architecture patterns, and product feedback that can scale beyond a single account. You will operate with architectural depth across enterprise deployments, including regulated and self-managed environments, while helping shape how GitLab and Duo Agent Platform are used in practice. This role sits within GitLab’s Revenue organization and reports to the Director, Forward Deployed Engineering.
Some examples of our projects:
- Building deployment accelerators and reference architectures for GitLab Duo Agent Platform in constrained or regulated environments
- Creating reusable migration tooling and adoption patterns that help customers expand from source code management into CI/CD, security, compliance, and AI workflows
What you'll do
- Conduct deep technical discovery in strategic customer accounts to assess platform readiness, identify constraints, and find the highest-leverage adoption opportunities across GitLab and Duo Agent Platform.
- Lead architecture and delivery design for complex enterprise environments, including self-managed, regulated, migration-heavy, or security-sensitive deployments.
- Partner with customer stakeholders and GitLab account teams to prioritize use cases based on business impact, technical feasibility, repeatability, and long-term platform value.
- Design and build bounded proofs, prototypes, reusable components, and accelerators across source code management, CI/CD, security, compliance, and AI workflows.
- Author reference architectures, deployment standards, runbooks, and technical guidance that reduce time to value across multiple customer environments.
- Prototype, validate, and harden Duo Agent Platform workflows using custom agents, custom flows, GitLab APIs, integrations, CI/CD automation, and policy-aware deployment patterns.
- Contribute production-ready code, design documents, or architecture changes when needed, working with GitLab Engineering to turn recurring field patterns into product improvements.
- Travel for strategic customer engagements, architecture workshops, and team on-sites as needed.
What you'll bring
- Significant experience across software engineering, platform architecture, forward deployed engineering, technical consulting, or similar customer-facing engineering roles.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals, including the ability to read, reason about, and contribute to production systems, with experience in technologies relevant to GitLab such as Ruby on Rails and/or Go.
- Hands-on experience with GitLab CI/CD, pipeline design, YAML, runners, GitLab APIs, and the broader DevSecOps workflow.
- Strong systems design and enterprise architecture skills, with the ability to balance security, reliability, operational simplicity, and adoption needs.
- Experience creating reusable technical assets such as accelerators, frameworks, tools, standards, reference architectures, or design guidance that outlive a single engagement.
- Experience with infrastructure as code and enterprise deployment tooling such as Terraform, Ansible, Helm, or similar approaches.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including experience leading technical discovery and architecture conversations with senior stakeholders.
- Working knowledge of large language models, agent-based workflows, and the practical limits of AI systems in production environments, along with comfort working in GitLab’s remote, asynchronous, and values-driven culture.
About the team
The Forward Deployed Engineer is part of GitLab’s Forward Deployed Engineering function within the Revenue organization. This team works at the intersection of customer outcomes, platform architecture, and product insight. Their goal is to help strategic customers make meaningful technical progress while ensuring that each engagement produces something reusable for the broader field, product, or engineering organization.
This team is especially focused on environments where standard approaches are not enough, such as self-managed deployments, regulated settings, complex migrations, or advanced AI workflow activation. Rather than acting as long-term embedded delivery, the team serves as a strategic multiplier by building durable assets, clarifying architecture decisions, and helping GitLab learn from real customer constraints. The work is highly cross-functional and collaborative, with close partnership across Professional Services, Customer Success, Support, Solution Architecture, Product, and Engineering.
The team operates in GitLab’s all-remote and asynchronous environment, with a strong focus on transparency, iteration, and measurable impact. A core challenge for the team is balancing near-term customer needs with long-term reuse, so that solutions improve outcomes not just for one account, but across many future engagements.
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 about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.
Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.
Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.
GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.