An overview of this role

As Vice President of Engineering, you will oversee a globally distributed engineering organization that sits at the center of our product and platform strategy. You will help shape how we build the future of an AI-powered DevSecOps platform, partnering closely with executive stakeholders across the business to align engineering direction with company priorities. This is a hands-on executive role for someone who brings technical depth, experience exercising sound judgment in complex engineering environments, and a track record of building and scaling systems, teams, and product delivery.

In this role, you will own engineering across multiple product areas, strengthen how teams deliver reliable and modern software, and help advance our AI-native approach across engineering workflows, developer tooling, code review, and continuous delivery. In your first year, you will be expected to set a clear engineering strategy, grow the engineering management team, improve operational maturity, and create the conditions for high-quality execution in our all-remote, handbook-first environment.
What you'll do

• Define the engineering strategy for your functional area, aligning roadmap, investments, and organizational planning with GitLab's company direction.
• Lead a large, globally distributed engineering organization across multiple product domains, supporting Directors, Senior Managers, Engineering Managers, and their teams.
• Drive operational excellence through clear engineering metrics, strong incident management practices, and a disciplined approach to reliability, quality, and developer productivity.
• Champion AI-native engineering practices across workflows, platforms, and products, including developer tooling, code review, and CI/CD.
• Partner with Product Management to create a consistent, high-velocity working model between engineering and product teams.
• Collaborate with Finance and executive peers on headcount planning, budgeting, forecasting, and investment tradeoffs.
• Work with Sales, Marketing, Alliances, Customer Success, and security leaders to address enterprise needs and support strategic initiatives.
• Represent your engineering organization in executive discussions, board-level conversations, and external forums through clear communication and transparent documentation.

What you'll bring

• Experience leading large engineering organizations across multiple product areas in a distributed environment, including leadership through Directors and Senior Managers.
• Strong technical credibility with the ability to engage senior individual contributors and leaders on architecture, engineering quality, reliability, and system design tradeoffs.
• Background building scalable frontend platforms or large-scale user-facing systems, alongside backend or infrastructure experience.
• Direct experience modernizing a monolithic application into modular, independently deployable architecture in production, including runtime composition decisions and migration sequencing.
• Experience developing or scaling a design system that acts as a reliable contract between platform and product teams, with attention to versioning, testing, and documentation.
• Familiarity with AI-powered product development or integrating AI into developer workflows, with a clear understanding of the difference between AI features and AI-native architecture.
• Ability to operate effectively in a remote-first, asynchronous, documentation-heavy culture with clear written communication and sound organizational judgment.
• Strength in cross-functional leadership, including work with executive stakeholders on business cases, investment planning, customer requirements, and balancing innovation with operational stability; we welcome candidates whose experience may come through different paths with relevant transferable skills.

About the team

Our engineering organization spans several product and platform groups within GitLab's DevSecOps platform. We bring together senior engineering leaders who coordinate roadmaps, architectural decisions, and execution across shared systems and customer-facing experiences. In this role, you will join our leadership team as we develop managers, strengthen collaboration across groups, and help the organization scale effectively as GitLab grows.

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
• Home Office Support

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. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.

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.