Director, Engineering, Platform Operations & Productivity

GitLab; United States; Remote; USD 260,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible Paid Time Off

Equity Compensation & Employee Stock-P

Growth and Development Fund

Parental Leave

Job summary

GitLab is seeking a Director of Engineering, Platform Operations & Productivity to own three high-leverage functions that require hands-on technical depth. This senior leader will shape the reliability and productivity of GitLab’s platform, guiding a small, AI-enabled Platform Staff team across Git & Gitaly Operations and related groups.

You will build metrics, operating rhythms, and crisis response plans, ensuring predictable outcomes without heroic toil.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience designing distributed systems and their real-world deployments.
• Proven track record running engineering operations at meaningful scale.
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools and judicious adoption.
• Strong incident management and production reliability discipline.
• Experience making staffing decisions to keep high-leverage teams lean and effective.

Responsibilities

• 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 (Friction Elimination), including hiring and developing the Manager, Nonlinear Productivity, and driving measurable metric movement.
• 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 bootstrapping a new team, handling a specific customer request, or stepping into a crisis.
• Assess when Platform Staff should hand work off to a permanent team once it’s stable.
• Set the technical bar by reviewing distributed systems designs, friction-elimination fixes, and crisis management plans.
• Build the operating rhythm and metrics that keep all three functions running predictably, avoiding overreliance on any single person.
• Represent all three functions to peer engineering stakeholders, and step in front of customers during mid-crisis engagements.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Engineering operations leadership

Production reliability

Incident management

AI-assisted development tools

People management

Cross-functional collaboration

Staffing decisions

Job description

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.

The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, with all team members expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact. GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Our high-performance culture is driven by our values and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. Co-create the future with us as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.

*Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

An overview of this role

As Director, Engineering, Platform Operations & Productivity, you’ll own three functions that all require hands-on technical depth, not just people management.

Platform Staff is a small, senior, AI-native team that moves to wherever the organization needs the most leverage, from standing up early scaffolding for an initiative, to taking on a high-impact customer request that doesn’t fit any existing team’s charter, to stepping directly into a production crisis until it’s resolved.

This role is for a technical engineering director who has personally built distributed systems, not only managed people who did. You’ll use clear metrics, strong operating rhythms, and direct technical judgment so these teams deliver predictable outcomes without relying on one-person heroics.

What you’ll 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.

What you’ll bring

• 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.

About the team

We work across three connected platform and productivity functions. Through Git & Gitaly Operations, we are responsible for the production reliability of the infrastructure layer underneath GitLab's own version control system. Through Nonlinear Productivity, we drive measurable improvements to GitLab's software development lifecycle and code-generation workflows. Through Platform Staff, we provide focused senior engineering capacity for high-leverage work that needs direct ownership before it can be stabilized or handed off to a permanent team.

Collectively, we help GitLab improve the reliability, productivity, and responsiveness of the platform that powers how our customers and GitLab team members build software.

How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees

• 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

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.

Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.

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