Concept Architects work on the future of the GitLab product experience. The team identifies where the product needs to go, builds the case for why it matters, and creates the concept work that makes that direction real enough for the organization to act on.
The output is not speculative design. Each concept is a researched, justified, and designed position on a specific problem space. The work is complete enough to drive investment decisions and specific enough to inform what comes next in the product.
Concept Architects operates on a longer horizon than the rest of the product organization. The team does not take on feature work, backfill stage group capacity, or execute against an existing roadmap. The work begins before the roadmap does.
Each concept moves through a common arc: identifying the problem space, grounding it in market and customer evidence, developing the design position, and building the case for organizational investment. Work is developed internally until it is ready for executive review or cross-functional engagement through Upstream Studios leadership. See Concept Release Discipline for guidelines on how and when concept work is shared outside the team.
Researchers from Experience Research are embedded with the team. Jessica Kane and Will Leidheiser support concept development and directional research, and report into Experience Research.
The team’s active work is tracked in the Concept Architects backlog. This link is accessible to GitLab team members only.
For the full team roster, see the Design Strategy handbook page.
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