Field Strategist, Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

This Staff Forward Deployed Engineer role at GitLab focuses on strategic accounts, guiding customers through the adoption of GitLab and the GitLab Duo Agent Platform. The work involves addressing the complexities of enterprise environments, including self-managed and regulated deployments. Key activities include technical discovery to assess platform readiness, identifying high-value adoption opportunities, and leading architecture and delivery design for intricate scenarios involving platform migration and specific regulatory needs.

A core part of the role is partnering with customer stakeholders and internal GitLab teams to prioritize use cases based on business impact and technical feasibility. The engineer will design and build proofs of concept, prototypes, and deployment patterns, creating reusable accelerators across various domains like source code management, CI/CD, security, and AI-enabled workflows. This includes architecting self-managed and enterprise deployments, covering aspects such as runners, access controls, network boundaries, and AI Gateway integration.

Success in this position means transforming recurring field patterns into reusable assets like runbooks, templates, and reference architectures that benefit multiple accounts. The role also involves contributing code or technical designs upstream to address product blockers when necessary. The ideal candidate will have experience in software engineering, platform architecture, or similar customer-facing engineering roles, demonstrating strong software engineering fundamentals and systems design skills.

The annual salary for this position ranges from $80,500 to $138,000.

Skills that matter here

• Ruby on Rails: Experience with Ruby on Rails is beneficial for contributing to production systems and understanding existing architectures.
• Go: Experience with Go is beneficial for contributing to production systems and understanding existing architectures.
• CI/CD: This role requires hands-on experience with GitLab CI/CD, including pipeline design and understanding its integration within enterprise environments.
• YAML: Proficiency in YAML is necessary for designing GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
• Terraform: Experience with Terraform is required for infrastructure as code and enterprise deployment tooling.
• Ansible: Experience with Ansible is required for infrastructure as code and enterprise deployment tooling.

Who this role suits

• A person who thrives on solving complex technical challenges in demanding enterprise settings.
• Someone with a strong background in software engineering and systems architecture, capable of deep technical discovery and design.
• An individual who enjoys creating reusable technical assets and documentation that can be leveraged across multiple projects.
• A professional comfortable leading discussions with senior stakeholders across various departments, including security and compliance.

From the employer

What you'll do

• Conduct deep technical discovery in selected strategic accounts to assess platform readiness, evaluate constraints, and identify high-value adoption opportunities across GitLab and GitLab Duo Agent Platform.
• Lead architecture and delivery design for complex enterprise environments where platform migration, regulated requirements, and product boundaries intersect.
• 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, deployment patterns, and reusable accelerators across source code management, CI/CD, security, compliance, and AI-enabled workflows.
• Architect self-managed and enterprise deployments, including runners, access controls, network boundaries, observability, AI Gateway, model connectivity, and governance controls.
• Turn recurring field patterns into reusable assets such as runbooks, templates, design notes, technical guidance, product briefs, and reference architectures that can be used across accounts.
• Contribute code, technical designs, or architecture changes when strategically necessary, in partnership with product and engineering, to address blockers that should be solved upstream.
• Travel as needed for strategic customer engagements, architecture workshops, and team coordination, with expected travel up to 50%.

What you'll bring

• Experience in 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, ideally with experience in Ruby on Rails and/or Go.
• Strong systems design and software architecture skills, with experience evaluating APIs, asynchronous workflows, CI/CD systems, security boundaries, scalability, and operational tradeoffs.
• Hands-on experience with GitLab CI/CD, pipeline design, YAML, runners, and GitLab APIs.
• Experience with infrastructure as code and enterprise deployment tooling such as Terraform, Ansible, Helm, or similar approaches.
• Working knowledge of large language models, agentic patterns, tool orchestration, and the practical limits of AI systems in production environments.
• A track record of creating reusable technical assets that outlive a single engagement, along with strong written and verbal communication skills for technical design and architecture guidance.
• Comfort leading conversations with senior stakeholders across security, compliance, engineering, platform, and business teams, especially in ambiguous enterprise environments.