Senior Backend Engineer, SSCS: Authorization

An overview of this role

Help us architect and evolve our RBAC (role based access control) system. Our team's primary responsibility is to build a robust, scalable authorization system that gives customers complete control over their member access. From zero to owner.

Custom roles allow an organization to create user roles with the precise privileges and permissions required for that organization's needs. It's a valuable, paid feature that our enterprise customers increasingly depend on. As a senior engineer, you'll drive technical decisions that shape the future of our authorization system.

Beyond implementing custom permissions and building features to help owners manage their teams, you'll make critical architecture decisions to ensure the scalability, security, and performance of the product. We're at the earlier stages of the feature, giving you the opportunity to significantly influence our technical direction, including establishing conventions, design patterns, and development guidelines that will shape how the feature grows.

This role offers unique opportunities to collaborate with our "sister" team Anti-abuse to work on security-focused features. Help lead the battle against crypto-mining by architecting solutions that leverage risk models, identity verification, and pipeline verification and analysis.

What You’ll Do  

• Provide technical guidance on migrating our existing authorization system to a mature authorization system.
• Collaborate with our authentication team on design and implementation of a greater authorization and authentication system.
• Design and implement scalable solutions for our RBAC system, with a focus on enterprise-grade custom permissions
• Architect features that enable efficient team management while maintaining performance at scale
• Make and advocate for technical decisions that ensure the long-term maintainability and scalability of Custom Roles
• Lead technical discussions and mentor team members during the refinement process
• Collaborate with Product Management to influence milestone planning and technical direction
• Drive improvements to system performance, security, and reliability
• Participate in and lead incident response when required
• Represent the team in cross-functional technical discussions

What You’ll Bring 

• Extensive professional experience with Ruby on Rails
• Deep understanding of authorization systems including RBAC, ABAC, ReBac
• Experience with using and implementing a mature authorization system (OPA, Cedar, Zanzibar)
• Experience designing and implementing enterprise-grade authentication systems (OAuth, SAML, SCIM, LDAP)
• Deep experience with relational databases and query optimization (postgres preferred)
• Track record of leading technical initiatives and mentoring other engineers
• Experience diagnosing and resolving performance issues at scale
• Strong security mindset and experience with secure coding practices
• Demonstrated ability to make sound architectural decisions and lead technical discussions

About the team

The Authorization group is responsible for ensuring that an authenticated user has access to the proper resources within the application. We are focused on making our customizable permissions offering more robust by adding additional granular permissions every milestone. As a senior engineer, you'll play a key role in shaping the technical direction of these initiatives.

You can read about the work that the team is doing here.

How GitLab will support you

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• All remote, asynchronous work environment
• Flexible Paid Time Off 
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental leave 
• Home office support

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.