Director, Engineering, Platform Operations & Productivity
GitLab · Posted Oct 15
DevSecOps platform, software version control, CI/CD pipeline, and AI-assisted development services
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About the role
GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, and this role leads three connected platform and productivity functions: Git & Gitaly Operations, which owns production reliability of the infrastructure layer underneath GitLab's version control system; Nonlinear Productivity, which drives measurable improvements to GitLab's software development lifecycle and code-generation workflows; and Platform Staff, a small senior team providing focused engineering capacity for high-leverage work. The Director owns outcomes, hiring, metrics, and the technical bar across all three functions, personally reviewing distributed systems designs, friction-elimination fixes, and crisis management plans. The role requires hands-on distributed systems experience in addition to managing multiple managers, across Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated, and SaaS environments.
What you will do
- Own outcomes for Git & Gitaly Operations, including hiring and developing the Manager, Git & Gitaly Operations, and holding the function to its reliability bar across Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated, and SaaS.
- Own outcomes for Nonlinear Productivity, also known as Friction Elimination, including hiring and developing the Manager, Nonlinear Productivity, and holding the function to measurable metric movement rather than activity.
- Build and oversee Platform Staff directly as a small, senior team that uses AI-assisted tools as a standard part of its work.
- Assess, case by case, what Platform Staff picks up, such as a new team that needs bootstrapping, a customer request too specific for any existing team's charter, or a crisis that needs someone in the room immediately.
- Assess when Platform Staff should hand work off to a permanent team once it's stable.
- Set the technical bar across all three functions by personally reviewing distributed systems designs, friction-elimination fixes, and crisis management plans with equal depth.
- Build the operating rhythm and metrics that keep all three functions running predictably, so none of them relies on any one person working unsustainable hours.
- Represent all three functions to peer engineering stakeholders, and step in front of customers directly when Platform Staff is engaged mid-crisis.
Skills used in this role
What the employer is looking for
- Working knowledge of GitLab's development workflows and platform capabilities so you can assess productivity friction, operational trade-offs, and team needs in context.
- Hands-on experience designing and shipping distributed systems personally, not only through teams you've managed.
- A track record running highly effective engineering operations, including production reliability and incident management, at meaningful scale.
- A track record driving measurable engineering productivity improvements across more than one team or organization.
- Experience with AI-assisted development tools, and sound judgment about when they help a small team do work that would otherwise require a larger team.
- People management experience across multiple managers or functions at once.
- Ability to context-switch effectively across genuinely different problem types, including infrastructure operations, developer productivity, and ad hoc crisis response, sometimes in the same week.
- A track record making staffing decisions that keep a high-leverage team intentionally small, and building alignment around those decisions rather than growing the team by default.
Benefits and support
- Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Team Member Resource Groups
- Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Growth and Development Fund
- Parental Leave
About GitLab
GitLab is an intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, delivered as a single application that empowers development, security, and operations teams to ship software faster and more securely. Operating as one of the world's largest all-remote companies, GitLab integrates the entire software lifecycle from planning and source code management to CI/CD and automated security testing. Millions of users and thousands of organizations globally rely on GitLab to scale their development workflows and adopt agentic AI engineering.
- Industry
- Software Development
- Company size
- 2375 employees
- Founded
- 2011
- Location
- San Francisco, California, USA
- Funding stage
- Public Company
Funding
Public Company · $435M raised
- 2022-09-16Post IPOUndisclosed
- 2019-09-17Series E$268M
- 2018-09-19Series D$100M
- 2017-10-10Series C$20M
- 2016-03-15Series B$4M
Leadership
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Technology Officer
Chief Product and Marketing Officer
Chief Business and Legal Officer
Recent coverage
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