Backend Engineer, Analytics Instrumentation (Golang)

The role

This intermediate backend engineering role sits within GitLab's Data Engineering organization, responsible for designing and maintaining a centralized instrumentation service. The role bridges product teams needing easy instrumentation with data consumers requiring reliability, serving as foundational infrastructure for usage tracking and billing across SaaS and self-managed deployments.

What you would do

• Design and build unified Go-based instrumentation service replacing multiple language-specific SDKs
• Manage data handling including sending, transit, and quality assurance for instrumentation events
• Provide training and technical guidance to product teams on feature instrumentation practices
• Perform on-call duties during working hours for billing and instrumentation systems
• Collaborate with research, development, and data teams to identify requirements and deliver solutions
• Make architectural decisions balancing ease of use with data reliability and correctness

What they asked for

• Proficiency building and maintaining production services in Go
• Strong backend development experience designing scalable, reliable systems
• Knowledge of system reliability, performance optimization, data quality, and observability
• Experience designing and implementing APIs like REST or gRPC for team integration
• Track record working cross-functionally with product and data stakeholders
• Familiarity with instrumentation, analytics, or foundational infrastructure in application environments