Backend Engineer
Nao Hashizume
Peter LeitzenBug Prioritization
This page describes the bug prioritization process performed by the quality engineering sub-department as part of the cross-functional prioritization process.
Developer Experience
Developer Experience is a newly formed group, born from the strategic merger of the Engineering Productivity team and the Test Platform sub-department. This exciting combination allows us to take a holistic approach to delivering cutting-edge Platform capabilities.
Mission
Our mission is to empower developers to focus on innovation, build, and deliver high-quality products to our customers. We aim to achieve this through:
- State-of-the-art developer tooling.
- Robust and reliable test infrastructure.
- Data-driven analysis for informed decision-making.
- Streamlined release and test governance to ensure consistency, compliance, and quality across the development lifecycle.
- Continuous performance profiling.
Team Structure
Infrastructure Platforms Department structure is documented in our handbook.
OKRs
TODO
Weights
We use Fibonacci Series for weights and limit the highest number to 8. The definitions are as below:
| Weight | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 - Trivial | Simple and quick changes such as typo fixes, test tag updates, or trivial documentation additions |
| 2 - Small | Straight forward changes with no underlying dependencies needed, such as new tests that use existing factories or page objects |
| 3 - Medium | Well understood changes with a few dependencies. Few surprises can be expected, such as new tests that require new factories or page objects/components |
| 5 - Large | A task that will require some investigation and research, in addition to the above weights, such as tests that need framework level changes which can impact other parts of the test suite |
| 8 - X-large | A very large task that will require much investigation and research. Pushing initiative level |
| 13 or more | Please break the work down further, we do not use weights higher than 8. |
Developer Experience group structure
Team Members
Management team
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
 Vincy Wilson
|
Director, Test Platform |
 Abhinaba Ghosh
|
Engineering Manager, Test Platform, Development Analytics |
 Ksenia Kolpakova
|
Engineering Manager, Test Platform, Test Engineering |
 Kassandra Svoboda
|
Manager, Quality Engineering, Core Platform & SaaS Platform |
 Mohga Gamea
|
Manager, Quality Engineering |
Individual contributors
The following people are members of the Development Analytics group:
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
|
Abhinaba Ghosh
|
Engineering Manager, Test Platform, Development Analytics |
 Andrejs Cunskis
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Development Analytics |
 Dan Davison
|
Staff Software Engineer in Test, Development Analytics |
 David Dieulivol
|
Senior Backend Engineer, Development Analytics |
 Ievgen Chernikov
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Development Analytics |
 Jennifer Li
|
Senior Backend Engineer, Development Analytics |
 Pranshu Sharma
|
Intermediate Backend Engineer, Development Analytics |
 Lohit Peesapati
|
Intermediate Backend Engineer, Development Analytics |
The following people are members of the Developer Tooling group:
The following people are members of the Feature Readiness group:
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
|
Kassandra Svoboda
|
Manager, Quality Engineering, Core Platform & SaaS Platform |
 Andy Hohenner
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, SaaS Platforms:US Public Sector Services |
 Brittany Wilkerson
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Dedicated:Environment Automation |
 Jim Baumgardner
|
Software Engineer in Test, SaaS Platforms:US Public Sector Services |
 John McDonnell
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Systems:Gitaly |
 Nivetha Prabakaran
|
Software Engineer in Test, Dev:Manage |
 Richard Chong
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Developer Experience:Feature Readiness |
 Sanad Liaquat
|
Staff Software Engineer in Test, Test and Tools Infrastructure |
 Sofia Vistas
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Test and Tools Infrastructure |
 Vishal Patel
|
Software Engineer in Test, Core Platform:Systems |
The following people are members of the Performance Enablement group:
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
|
Kassandra Svoboda
|
Manager, Quality Engineering, Core Platform & SaaS Platform |
|
Andy Hohenner
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, SaaS Platforms:US Public Sector Services |
|
Brittany Wilkerson
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Dedicated:Environment Automation |
|
Jim Baumgardner
|
Software Engineer in Test, SaaS Platforms:US Public Sector Services |
|
John McDonnell
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Systems:Gitaly |
|
Nivetha Prabakaran
|
Software Engineer in Test, Dev:Manage |
|
Richard Chong
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Developer Experience:Feature Readiness |
|
Sanad Liaquat
|
Staff Software Engineer in Test, Test and Tools Infrastructure |
|
Sofia Vistas
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Test and Tools Infrastructure |
|
Vishal Patel
|
Software Engineer in Test, Core Platform:Systems |
The following people are members of the Test Governance group:
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
|
Ksenia Kolpakova
|
Engineering Manager, Test Platform, Test Engineering |
 Chloe Liu
|
Staff Software Engineer in Test, Development Analytics |
 Désirée Chevalier
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Dev:Plan |
 Harsha Muralidhar
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Govern |
 Jay McCure
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Dev:Create |
 Joy Roodnick
|
Software Engineer in Test, Test Engineering, Verify:Runner group, Fulfillment section |
 Tiffany Rea
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, CI:Verify |
 Tim Beauchamp
|
Software Engineer in Test |
 Will Meek
|
Senior Software Engineer in Test, Secure |
Debugging Failing Tests and Test Pipelines
Guidelines for investigating end-to-end test pipeline failures
Developer Experience Dashboards
This handbook page serves as a central repository for all our Developer Experience dashboard details
Developer Experience Onboarding
Guidelines for onboarding as a new Developer Experience Stage member
Developer Experience Project Management
Guidelines for project management for the Developer Experience Stage at GitLab
Developer Tooling team
The Developer Tooling team enables all GitLab contributors to efficiently deliver results for customers by providing stable and performant software development tools, such as the GitLab Development Kit.
Development Analytics Group
Development Analytics Group under Developer Experience Stage
End-to-end Pipeline Monitoring
Overview of our E2E monitoring tools and practices
Engineering Analytics Team
Engineering Analytics Team
Feature Readiness
Feature Readiness group within Developer Experience sub-department
Performance and Scalability
The Quality Department has a focus on measuring and improving the performance of GitLab, as well as creating and validating reference architectures that self-managed customers can rely on as performant configurations.
Performance Enablement
Performance Enablement group within Developer Experience sub-department
Pipeline Triage
Overview of GitLab's E2E Pipeline Triage processes
Quality Engineering Learning Resources
The Quality Engineering Sub-Department has compiled a list of learning resources for SET and QEM growth.
Risk Mapping
Developing a strategic approach to risk and mitigation planning.
Self-Managed Excellence
This page lists more details about Self-Managed Excellence initiatives
Test Coverage
The Test Platform Department has coverage to support testing particular scenarios.
Test Governance Group
Test Governance Group under Developer Experience Stage
Test Governance Tips and Tricks
This page lists a number of tips and tricks we have found useful in day to day end-to-end test level related tasks.
Test Platform On-call Rotation
The Test Platform Sub-Department has two on-call rotations: pipeline triage (SET-led) and incident management (QEM-led).
Test Platform Roadmap
Roadmap for the Test Platform Sub-Department at GitLab
Last modified March 12, 2025: Fix team members list for Developer Tooling (
5931cfe4)
