Director, Engineering, Platform Operations & Productivity

ABOUT THE ROLE As Director, Engineering, Platform Operations & Productivity, you will play a critical role in driving the success of GitLab's platform and productivity functions. You will own three key areas: Git & Gitaly Operations, Nonlinear Productivity, and Platform Staff. This role requires a technical engineering director with hands-on experience designing and shipping distributed systems, as well as strong leadership skills to manage multiple teams and functions. WHAT YOU'LL DO As Director, Engineering, Platform Operations & Productivity, your key responsibilities will include: - Owning 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. - Owning 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. - Building and overseeing Platform Staff directly as a small, senior team that uses AI-assisted tools as a standard part of its work. - Assessing, 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. - Assessing when Platform Staff should hand work off to a permanent team once it's stable. - Setting the technical bar across all three functions by personally reviewing distributed systems designs, friction-elimination fixes, and crisis management plans with equal depth. - Building the operating rhythm and metrics that keep all three functions running predictably, so none of them relies on any one person working unsustainable hours. - Representing all three functions to peer engineering stakeholders, and stepping in front of customers directly when Platform Staff is engaged mid-crisis. WHAT YOU'LL NEED To succeed in this role, you will need: - 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. WHY REMOTE As a remote employee, you will have the flexibility to work from anywhere and be part of a global team that values collaboration and innovation. You will be expected to be highly self-motivated and able to work effectively in a remote environment. BENEFITS - Competitive salary - Comprehensive health