Director, Platform Operations & AI-Driven 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 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.