Product Operations Job Family
This job family represents the Product Operations function within the Product Division. It’s a specalized function within Product including both individual contributor roles and people managers.
Responsibilities
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Operationalize Outcome Drive Products
- Identify opportunities to automate GitLab Product Manager’s responsibilities and related tasks to help drive consistency and efficency across product managemment.
- Seek to improve overall Product division execution via contributions on product process, our product development flow and product timeline.
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Build Qualitative & Quantititative Feedback Loops
- Improve how GitLab collects, analyzes and actions on feedback from internal and external stakeholders and customers
- Improve GitLab’s internal and external product communication via updates to our direction, release posts, surveys and other communication mechanisms
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- Support the Product Division by contributing to the continued development of all PMs across each section
- Propose changes and incorporate best practices and industry knowledge into GitLab’s process, and handbook
Requirements
- Ability to use GitLab
- Proficient at all product manager base requirements
- Share our values and work in accordance with those values
- Ability to thrive in a fully remote organization
- Comfortable with fast-pace and rapid iteration
- Experience with contributing to Product Operations (either formally or informally) at organizations of various sizes
Levels
Senior Product Manager, Product Operations
Role
The mission of the GitLab product team is to consistently create products and experiences that customers love and value. To do this consistently, we strive to create a world class product system in which the extended product team can do the best work of their careers. GitLab is seeking a Senior Product Manager to manage the GitLab product development system as a product and evolve it into a world-class system that can scale rapidly with GitLab the company. The Senior Product Manager will be passionate about the product management discipline and understands the benefits of frameworks/processes and how to optimize them in a way that is effective in delivering value while efficient and as lightweight as possible. The Senior Product Manager will thrive at collaboration with product managers and various cross-functional team members as both customers and partners to better GitLab product development processes as well as GitLab’s product offering itself with the initiatives they lead, support and implement.
Responsibilities
Partner with the Group Manager, Product Operations to maintain a prioritized Product Operations backlog focused on the areas below:
- Operationalize Outcome Driven Products
- Identify opportunities to automate GitLab product managers’ responsibilities and related tasks to help drive consistency and efficiency across product management as a whole
- Improve the release post and release notes framework for Gitlab the company through process refinements and automation
- Contribute to the definition and management of the GitLab product development flow
- Recommend and implement optimizations to the product development timeline
- Support the Group Manager, Product Operations in designing/delivering on high priority projects as they arise, collaborating/contributing with the perspective of how to create repeatable/reusable frameworks and automations for efficiency
- Build Qualitative & Quantitive Feedback Loops
- Help streamline intelligence as a whole between product management and its stable counterparts within GitLab the company through process/frameworks refinements and automation
- Leverage automation to boost internal and external knowledge about GitLab’s key product communications such as:
- Updates to product Vision/Strategy, Section Direction and monthly kick-offs
- Presentation and discoverability of release post and release notes
- Design and build systems to better share knowledge and align product management and its stable counterparts such as Marketing, Support, Sales and Customer Support
- Develop tools for collecting and aggregating larger volumes of customer and user feedback from GitLab issues
- Support maintenance and automation of Product Operations owned surveys
- Help create and maintain Product Operations related intelligence dashboards in Sisense and other tools as needed
- Scale Product Knowledge
- Help research, organize and recommend resources on product management best practices
- Contribute content and training Learning & Development for Product Management to help up-level the skills of the product team
- Maintain GitLab Learn for Product Management as a GitLab Learn Curator
- Constantly improve the Product Handbook by working collaboratively across product management to update, improve and maintain it
- Be the DRI of and expert on how to maintain and best leverage GitLab’s various templates
Requirements
- 4+ years of experience in Product Management or related roles in software development such as engineering and UX and/or system design
- Experience in customer-first product systems similar to GitLab’s, especially important is familiarity with modern customer validation techniques
- Experience supporting the rollout of frameworks/process updates for team of 100+
- Deep knowledge of and demonstrated experience in change management
- Technical skills and familiarity with Git and other tools:
- Familiarity / Working knowledge with some scripting language (Python, Ruby, Javascript, etc; Ruby preferred)
- Strong understanding of Git generally and in the context of GitLab (basic commits, branching, merging; rebasing and merge conflict resolution preferred)
- Can use the GitLab application including issues and merge requests (ability to maintain, debug, and setup pipelines is preferred)
- Comfortable with using the command line and command line applications (shell, git, homebrew, asdf or other version manager)
- Comfortable with using a text editor of your choice (e.g., vim, emacs, VS Code, SublimeText, Textmate)
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Excellent organizational skills and ability to manage competing priorities
- You are living wherever you want and are excited about the all remote lifestyle
- You share our values, and work in accordance with those values
Other Helpful Experience
- Experience in technical product management, project management or program mangement
Group Manager, Product Operations
Role
As the Group Manager, Product Operations, you will be deeply passionate and knowledgeable about outcome driven product development methodologies and frameworks. You will own the Product Operations roadmap and communicate the vision and direction for GitLab’s product system. You will be responsible for ensuring the Product Management team’s operating health in tight partnership with stable counterparts across GitLab the company. Your “customers” will be a variety of internal constituents, including the CProdO, the CTO the CEO, the Product Management team, the cross-functional UX and Development teams, and business partners across GitLab. This role reports to the Chief Product Officer.
Individual responsibility
- Develop and drive the vision for a world class product system for GitLab the company and communicate it through Product Operations Direction
- Collaborate on the group’s charter with the Chief Product Officer, and CEO; and communicate this charter cross-functionally
- Research, shared and drive best practices and trends in product development at GitLab
- Work with the CProdO, the CTO and other team leads as needed to align and implment share best practices and frameworks
- Own key product system components such as GitLab’s product development flow and product handbook
- Develop and maintain a continuing education program for product managers
- Partner closely on various initiatives across the company with Product Management, Engineering, Design, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, etc.
- Drive communications across all R&D functions reinforcing process, policies, and best practices
- Run a great product operations team (recruit and hire, sense of progress, promote proactively, identify underperformance)
Team responsibility
- Serve as “Chief of Staff” for the Chief Product Officer, attending all key Product Management leadership meetings and helping to ensure execution of Product team decisions
- Help define, document, and ensure consistent execution of the GitLab product manager onboarding / product management / product development process
- Manage a team of 2-4 product managers and/or product operations specialists
- Lead the implementation and drive adoption of large scale process updates for the product team
- Manage and facilitate overal Product team sync meeting design and frequency
- Support in maintanance and review of Product team KPIs
- Own communication of product team frameworks/processes to other departments like Marketing, Support, Sales and Customer Success as needed
- Support the creation of external content including blogs, webinars, and demos
Requirements
- 7+ years in product leadership and/or product management roles
- 5+ years of people recruitement and management experience
- Past experience project management, program management and/or product operations preferred
- Expert in best practices in product management, product design and software development
- Demonstrated success in company-wide alignment and change management for teams of 500+
- Ability to inspire and motivate cross-functional product teams to adopt frameworks that prioritize value to customers/users
- Ability to partner with and align with stakeholders across the business such as marketing, Support, Sales and Customer Success
- Experience in companies that employ modern product management & software development techniques
- Ability to make decisions based on combined qualitiative and quantitative data
- Exceptional verbal and written communication skills
- Exceptional organizational skills and ability to manage competing priorities
- You are living wherever you want and are excited about the all remote lifestyle
- You share our values, and work in accordance with those values
About Gitlab
GitLab Inc. is a company based on the GitLab open-source project. GitLab is a community project to which over 2,200 people worldwide have contributed. We are an active participant in this community, trying to serve its needs and lead by example. We have one vision: everyone can contribute to all digital content, and our mission is to change all creative work from read-only to read-write so that everyone can contribute.
We value results, transparency, sharing, freedom, efficiency, self-learning, frugality, collaboration, directness, kindness, diversity, inclusion and belonging, boring solutions, and quirkiness. If these values match your personality, work ethic, and personal goals, we encourage you to visit our primer to learn more. Open source is our culture, our way of life, our story, and what makes us truly unique.
Top 10 Reasons to Work for GitLab:
- Mission: Everyone can contribute
- Results: Fast growth, ambitious vision
- Flexible Work Hours: Plan your day so you are there for other people & have time for personal interests
- Transparency: Over 2,000 webpages in GitLab handbook, GitLab Unfiltered YouTube channel
- Iteration: Empower people to be effective & have an impact, Merge Request rate, We dogfood our own product, Directly responsible individuals
- Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging: A focus on gender parity, Team Member Resource Groups, other initiatives
- Collaboration: Kindness, saying thanks, intentionally organize informal communication, no ego
- Total Rewards: Competitive market rates for compensation, Equity compensation, global benefits (inclusive of office equipment)
- Work/Life Harmony: Flexible workday, Family and Friends days
- Remote Done Right: One of the world's largest all-remote companies, prolific inventor of remote best practices
See our culture page for more!
Work remotely from anywhere in the world. Curious to see what that looks like? Check out our remote manifesto and guides.
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