Director of Engineering, Database Excellence

Gitlab; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

GitLab seeks a Director of Engineering, Database Excellence to lead the database platform for GitLab.com and self-managed deployments. You will own capacity, availability, and long-range planning, driving cost efficiency and data health across PostgreSQL, Redis, and OpenSearch.

You will coach Engineering Managers and Staff-plus engineers, partner with Infra, Product, and FinOps, and guide platform decisions to align with company strategy.

Qualifications

• Experience leading multiple engineering teams and managers.
• Proven track record owning large-scale database platforms.
• Strong communication with senior leadership and partners.

Responsibilities

• Set direction for the database platform in line with company strategy.
• Own database capacity and availability for GitLab.com and self-managed deployments.
• Lead and coach three Engineering Managers and develop Staff-plus engineers into leaders.
• Drive cross-division technical decisions with Infra, Product, Distribution, Support, Security, and FinOps.
• Partner with Product to prioritize database investments and tradeoffs for product outcomes.
• Own the hiring plan.

Skills

Leadership

Database leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Capacity planning

Tools

PostgreSQL

Redis

OpenSearch

ClickHouse

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 valuesand 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 of Engineering, Database Excellence, you will lead the Database Excellence stage and report to the Vice President of Data Engineering. You will set the direction for the databases that support GitLab.com, self-managed GitLab, and GitLab Dedicated. Your organization owns the reliability, capacity, health, and sustainability of GitLab's application datastores, with PostgreSQL as the primary focus alongside Redis, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, and object storage.

You will be accountable for database capacity and availability on GitLab.com. You will guide long-range platform decisions while partnering with Infrastructure, Product, Distribution, Support, Security, and FinOps. The work includes reducing infrastructure costs, improving data growth controls and saturation detection, standardizing database services, rebuilding the self-managed upgrade experience, and contributing to GitLab's company-wide datastore strategy, including Cells partitioning. Learn more in the Database Excellence handbook.

What you’ll do

• Set direction and long-range plans for the database platform in line with company strategy.
• Own database capacity and availability outcomes for GitLab.com, and communicate database risk to senior leadership.
• Lead and coach three Engineering Managers and develop Staff-plus engineers into leaders.
• Drive cross-division technical decisions using data, partnering with Infrastructure, Product, Distribution, Support, Security, and FinOps.
• Partner with Product to prioritize database platform investments and make infrastructure tradeoffs in the context of product outcomes.
• Own the hiring plan