Backend Engineer, Kotlin

An overview of this role

The Create:Editor Extensions team is part of the Create Stage in the Dev Sub-department. The Create stage focuses on multiple categories: Editor Extensions, Code Suggestions, the Web IDE, Remote Development, and more.

Our team works on Editor Extensions that support developers directly in their IDEs, where they spend the majority of their time.

You’ll be working on the GitLab Duo plugin for JetBrains. Joining the Editor Extensions team provides the opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI enhancement projects, which are at the forefront of technological advancements. The team's focus on expanding IDE support for Jetbrains IDEs using Kotlin offers an exciting challenge and a chance to contribute to innovative solutions.

Some examples of our projects: 

• Add Duo Chat to the JetBrains plugin
• Integrate a code parser to enhance Code Suggestions
• Integrate a Language Server in the JetBrains plugin

What you’ll do  

• Advocate for improvements to product quality, security, and performance that have a particular impact across your team.
• Solve technical problems of high scope and complexity. Exert influence on the overall objectives and long-range goals of your team.
• Experience with performance and optimization problems, particularly at large scale, and a demonstrated ability to both diagnose and prevent these problems
• Help to define and improve our internal standards for style, maintainability, and best practices for a high-scale web environment.
• Maintain and advocate for these standards through code review.
• Represent GitLab and its values in public communication around broader initiatives, specific projects, and community contributions.
• Provide mentorship for Junior and Intermediate Engineers on your team to help them grow in their technical responsibilities and remove blockers to their autonomy.
• Confidently ship moderately sized features and improvements with minimal guidance and support from other team members.
• Collaborate with the team on larger projects.
• Improve the engineering projects at GitLab via the maintainer program at own comfortable pace, while striving to become a project maintainer.

What you’ll bring 

• Mandatory: significant professional experience with Kotlin 
• Mandatory: professional experience with Jetbrains IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio)
• Highly desirable: previous experience with IDE support for Kotlin
• Highly desirable: previous experience with Build systems (e.g., Gradle, Maven)
• Highly desirable: previous experience with Frameworks and libraries (e.g., Spring Boot, Hibernate) 
• Highly desirable: experience building, debugging, optimizing software in large-scale, high-volume environments 
• Highly desirable: proven Database skills (e.g., SQL, ORM frameworks)
• Highly desirable: recent experience with Web development with Kotlin or Java (e.g., JSP, Servlets)
• Proficiency in the English language, both written and verbal, sufficient for success in a remote and largely asynchronous work environment
• Demonstrated capacity to clearly and concisely communicate about complex technical, architectural, and/or organizational problems and propose thorough iterative solutions
• Experience with performance and optimization problems and a demonstrated ability to both diagnose and prevent these problems
• Experience owning a project from concept to production, including proposal, discussion, and execution
• Self-motivated and self-managing, with strong organizational skills
• Share our values, and work in accordance with those values
• Ability to thrive in a fully remote organization
• Ability to use GitLab
• Comfort and familiarity with our code review process

About the team

We are currently focused on bringing Code Suggestions to more IDEs, by building dedicated extensions for VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Neovim, and GitLab’s Web IDE. We work on multiple projects written in Typescript, Kotlin, C#, and Lua.

Thanks to our Transparency value, you can see how we work in our Team page. You can even see our roadmaps (Editor Extensions, Code Suggestions) and listen to some of our meetings. 

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 budget 
• 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.