Graduate Saikat Sarkar to backend maintainer from trainee

Trainee maintainer issue: #8894 (closed)

Hey GitLab backend maintainers 👋

I'm Saikat Sarkar, a Senior Backend Engineer in the Secure::Static Analysis Group. I have been working as Software Engineer since 2008 and joined GitLab in February 2020. During this tenure, I took a break(~2 years) from professional software engineering to achieve my Master's degree in computer science.

I started my journey as a trainee maintainer in Aug 2020(~9 months ago) and this program gives me ample opportunity to review works produced by wonderful engineers. I also act as a code owner of different SAST analyzers and have played a pivotal role to release MobSF and semgrep analyzers.

I am always intrigued by innovative and value-added products. I feel very fortunate to be in GitLab, as I am contributing to some features that affect millions of users around the world. I find that being a backend maintainer of GitLab will help me to move towards becoming a staff engineer.

High level review stats

• Reviews and important implementations: ~65
• Percentage merged with no further comments / minor changes from maintainers: ~81%

Maintainer level review examples

I have reviewed a number of MRs during the trainee maintainer program. Following are some interesting ones where I got opportunities to express my suggestions about better coding based on code review guidelines.

• Improves performance of VulnerabilityReportsComparer
• Fix RSpec/EmptyLineAfterFinalLetItBe for ee/spec/helpers
• Group-level DORA metrics API
• Render Static Security & Compliance page for non-Ultimate users [RUN ALL RSPEC] [RUN AS-IF-FOSS]
• Add semgrep to Secure-Binaries and update support docs
• Make semgrep generally available
• Enable Semgrep analyzer in Configuration UI
• Add error status to package model
• gitaly: Fix access checks with transactions and quarantine environments
• Fix deadlock in backup repositories rake task

Feature development examples

I have authored around 61 MRs and 63 issues in GitLab. Moreover, I authored 31 MRs in security analyzer projects. Following are some interesting MRs in GitLab that I authored.

• Create GraphQL query to extract analyzers information
• Implement a parser to extract SAST configuration
• Add a service for token revocation
• Integrate RevocationAPI with BuildFinishedWorker
• Move ScanSecurityReportSecretsWorker to avoid race-condition
• Dedupe vulnerability_findings for bandit and semgrep
• Resolve N+1 query issue for scanners in StoreSecurityReportsWorker [RUN ALL RSPEC] [RUN AS-IF-FOSS]
• Remove N+1 query for updating Vulnerability links and identifier_objects
• Fix ArgumentError for bulk insert
• Allow the users to provide binaries to MobSF

Things to improve

@gitlab-org/maintainers/rails-backend please chime in below with your thoughts, and approve this MR if you agree.

Developer checklist

• Before this MR is merged
  • Mention @gitlab-org/maintainers/rails-backend, if not done (this issue template should do this automatically)
  • Assign this issue to your manager
• After this MR is merged
  • Request a maintainer from the #backend_maintainers Slack channel to add you as an Owner to gitlab-org/maintainers/rails-backend
  • Consider adding 'backend maintainer' to your Slack notification keywords

Manager checklist

• Before this MR is merged
  • The MR has been open for 5 working days
  • More than half of the existing maintainers approve the MR
  • There are no blocking concerns raised (if there are, please follow https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/workflow/code-review/#how-to-become-a-project-maintainer)
• After this MR is merged
  • Announce the good news in the relevant channels listed in https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/#keeping-yourself-informed