An overview of this role

Help us build the next generation of authentication services at GitLab. As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Authentication team, you'll work on authentication features across the Rails monolith and GATE, our new identity and access management control and data plane that supports every GitLab deployment model.

In this role, you'll expand authentication mechanisms such as support for agentic identities while helping keep GitLab and its customers secure through robust access management tooling and by addressing vulnerabilities reported through our HackerOne program.

The Authentication team works across many core components used by external users and GitLab teams. GATE will become the foundation for token issuance, validation, and identity services across GitLab.com multi-tenant SaaS, Self-Managed, Dedicated, and air-gapped environments. This means your work will have a direct impact on the GitLab product and the customers and users who rely on it.

Some of our projects include:

• Building GATE as the centralized service for token issuance and validation
• Token consolidation and migration of authentication paths out of the Rails monolith
• Passkeys and passwordless authentication
• Composite identities to merge machine and human authorization for AI
• Service accounts and secure automation improvements
• Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), OpenID Connect (OIDC), and System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) enhancements for automated user provisioning and single sign-on (SSO)

What you’ll do

• Contribute to the team's overall direction and play a direct part in shaping the future roadmap of GATE and GitLab's authentication services.
• Design and implement authentication features across the Rails monolith and GATE, including token issuance, validation, and identity services.
• Help migrate authentication and token management paths from the monolith into GATE while maintaining reliability across all deployment models.
• Build authentication mechanisms from the ground up, such as Workload Identity Federation.
• Bolster the security posture of our users and organizations through robust access management and by addressing vulnerabilities reported through our HackerOne program.
• Solve technical problems of high scope and complexity across Go and Ruby codebases.
• Help define and improve internal standards for style, maintainability, and best practices in a high-scale environment. Maintain and advocate for these standards through code review.
• Represent GitLab and its values in public communication around broader initiatives, specific projects, and contributions from people not working for GitLab Inc.
• Ship moderately sized features and improvements with moderate guidance and support from other team members.
• Collaborate with the team on larger projects, including the build-out of GATE.
• Improve GitLab engineering projects through the maintainer trainee program at your own comfortable pace, while striving to become a project maintainer.

What you’ll bring

• Professional experience with Go and/or Ruby in scaling or mission-critical software-as-a-service products.
• Familiarity with authentication and authorization technologies or techniques such as OAuth, OpenID Connect (OIDC), Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), single sign-on (SSO), System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM), Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), JSON Web Token (JWT), role-based access control (RBAC), or identity and access management (IAM).
• Knowledge of token systems, cryptographic signing, and key management.
• Experience building or contributing to a service from concept to production, including proposal, discussion, and execution.
• Proficiency in written and verbal English, with the ability to clearly communicate complex problems and solutions in a remote, largely asynchronous work environment.
• Experience with performance and optimization problems, and a demonstrated ability to diagnose and prevent these problems.
• Experience working in a highly agile, iterative software development process, with the ability to manage your work effectively, stay organized, and follow through on priorities.

About the team

Our mission is to empower GitLab system administrators with the toolkit they need to create their desired balance of security and accessibility for their GitLab experience.

Authentication is the first impression a new customer has when they configure a new GitLab instance, and we aim to make it as seamless as possible: from that first login, to onboarding users, to managing the basic security rules for their instance in a secure, flexible, and scalable manner.