Staff Backend Engineer - Database Change Management

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Staff Backend Engineer - Database Change Management
An overview of this role
As a Senior Backend Engineer, Database Upgrades, you'll help replace GitLab's sequential database migration system with a dependency graph model that makes upgrades faster and safer for GitLab.com and self-managed customers. You'll lead the design and delivery of a migration validation and test framework, including versioned fixture data across about 1,000 tables, a continuous integration (CI)-integrated test runner, and required correctness checks. You'll also serve as the senior technical anchor for our India-based engineering group, using clear written decisions to influence a team working across India, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the United States. The manager for this role is based on the US West Coast.

We're open to hiring this role at Staff level for a candidate whose experience matches that scope. At Staff level, you'll also own architecture decisions for the migration system and lead design work across teams.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design and delivery of the migration validation and test framework from initial approach through production use.
• Contribute to a dependency graph migration system that supports safe ordering, parallel execution, and three-phase, low-downtime upgrades.
• Mentor intermediate engineers through pairing, code review, and design feedback.
• Make and document technical decisions asynchronously so team members can build on them across time zones.
• Review schema migrations from engineers across GitLab for safety, backward compatibility, and reliability.
• Collaborate with Distribution, Quality Assurance, Database Architecture, Database Automation, and database framework teams to support GitLab.com and self-managed deployment methods.
• At Staff level, author and defend architecture proposals and represent the team in technical reviews across GitLab.

The rest of this description is on the employer’s own page.