Engineering Leadership

The Engineering Leadership becomes a cross-discipline management. A Senior Engineering Manager manages Engineering Managers with fullstack teams (frontend, backend, and fullstack engineers), and/or Engineering Individual Contributors (frontend, backend, and fullstack engineers)

Engineering Development Management Roles

Senior Engineering Manager, Development

The Senior Engineering Manager, Development role extends the Engineering Manager role.

Job Grade

The Senior Engineering Manager, Development is a grade 9.

Responsibilities

Senior Engineering Manager, Development responsibilities extend those of Senior Manager, Engineering with specific responsibities for the Development role.

Requirements

Senior Engineering Manager, Development requirements match those of Senior Manager, Engineering with specific requirements for the Development role.

Director, Development

• The Director of Development role extends the Senior Engineering Manager role.
• The Director of Engineering role reports to the Senior Director, Development.

Job Grade

The Director, Development is a grade 10.

Responsibilities

Director, Development responsibilities extend those of Director, Engineering with specific responsibities for the Development role.

Requirements

Director, Development requirements match those of Director, Engineering.

Distinguished Engineer

Job Grade

The Distinguished Engineer is a grade 10.

Responsibilities

The Distinguished Engineer role extends the Principal Engineer role as the individual equivalent of a Director, Engineering.

• At this level the person’s contribution plays to their strength and role on the team. These contributions come in different forms such as: Ship large feature sets with team, completes feature discovery independently, publishes technical blogs and speaks at conferences, interfaces with customers and provides technical direction to stakeholders (Product, Sales, others)
• Generate technical and process improvements
• Contribute to the sense of psychological safety on your team
• Work cross-departmentally
• Be a technical mentor for other engineers
• Author architecture documents for epics
• Hold team members accountable within their roles

Senior Director, Development

• The Senior Director, Development reports to the VP of Development.
• The Senior Director, Development role extends the Director, Development role. This role is defined by the functional area(s) the person manages.

See Senior Director, Development

Engineering Fellow

The Engineering Fellow role extends the Distinguished Engineer role and is the individual contributor equivalent of a VP of Engineering.

Job Grade

The Engineering Fellow is a grade 12.

Responsibilities

• Advocate for improvements to product quality, security, and performance that impact all of Engineering at GitLab.
• Solve technical problems of the highest scope and complexity for the entire organization.
• Exert significant influence on the overall objectives and long-range goals of GitLab.
• Ensure that our standards for style, maintainability, and best practices are suitable for the unique problems of scale and diversity of use represented by the GitLab product. Maintain and advocate for these standards through code review.
• Drive innovation across Engineering with a willingness to experiment and to boldly confront problems of immense complexity and scope.
• Actively seek out and prioritize our toughest technical challenges with a goal of creating significant improvement for GitLab’s use, ease of development, and/or technical efficiency.
• Represent GitLab and its values in public communication in all aspects of our software development lifecycle and public relations. Interact with customers and other external stakeholders as a consultant and spokesperson for critical projects and aspects of our technical architecture.
• Provide mentorship for Senior and Staff Engineers at the company to help them grow in their technical responsibilities and to share your great expertise across the organization.
• Confidently ship immense or otherwise extremely high-impact features and improvements with minimal guidance and support from other members of the organization.
• Help create the sense of psychological safety in the department

VP of Development

The VP of Development role extends the Senior Director, Development role. It expands the role to cover full functional and product capabilities at GitLab.

See VP of Development.

Executive VP of Engineering

Job Grade

The Chief Technology Officer is a grade 12.

• Drive recruiting of a world class team
• Help their directors, senior managers, managers, and engineers grow their skills and experience
• Measure and improve the happiness of Engineering
• Make sure the handbook is used and maintained in a transparent way
• Sponsor technical and process improvements
• Own the sense of psychological safety of the department
• Set quarterly OKRs around company goals
• Define the agile project management process
• Spend time with customers to understand their needs and issues
• Be accountable for product quality, security, and performance

Performance Indicators

• Response to Community SLO
• Hiring Actual vs. Plan
• Development Department merge request rate
• Diversity
• Handbook Update Frequency
• Team Member Retention

Hiring Process

Candidates for this position can generally expect the hiring process to follow the order below. Note that as candidates indicate preference or aptitude for one or more specialties, the hiring process will be adjusted to suit. Please keep in mind that candidates can be declined from the position at any stage of the process. To learn more about someone who may be conducting the interview, find their job title on our team page.

• Selected candidates will be invited to schedule a 30 minute screening call with one of our Technical Recruiters
• Next, candidates will be invited to schedule a 60 minute first interview with a Director of Engineering
• Next, candidates will be invited to schedule a 45 minute second peer interview with an Engineering Manager
• Next, candidates will be invited to schedule a 45 minute third interview with another member of the Engineering team
• Next, candidates will be invited to schedule a 45 minute fourth interview with a member of the Product team
• Next, candidates will be invited to schedule a 45 minute fifth interview with our VP of Engineering
• Finally, candidates may be asked to schedule a 50 minute final interview with our CEO
• Successful candidates will subsequently be made an offer via email

Career Ladder

For more details on the engineering career ladders, please review the engineering career development handbook page.

 

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About GitLab

GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating the rate of human progress. This mission is integral to our culture, influencing how we hire, build products, and lead our industry. We make this possible at GitLab by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values. Learn more about Life at GitLab. Thanks to products like Duo Enterprise, and Duo Workflow, customers get the benefit of AI at every stage of the SDLC. The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier. All team members are encouraged and expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact across our global organisation.

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