Director of Engineering, Database Excellence
Job description
GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.
The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, with all team members expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact. GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Our high-performance culture is driven by our values and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. Co-create the future with us as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.
*Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.
An overview of this role
As Director of Engineering, Database Excellence, you will lead the Database Excellence stage and report to the Vice President of Data Engineering, in our Engineering department. You will set the direction for the databases that support GitLab.com, self-managed GitLab, and GitLab Dedicated. Your organization owns the reliability, capacity, health, and sustainability of GitLab's application datastores, with PostgreSQL as the primary focus alongside Redis, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, and object storage.
You will be accountable for database capacity and availability on GitLab.com. You will guide long-range platform decisions while partnering with Infrastructure, Product, Distribution, Support, Security, and FinOps. The work includes reducing infrastructure costs, improving data growth controls and saturation detection, standardizing database services, rebuilding the self-managed upgrade experience, and contributing to GitLab's company-wide datastore strategy, including Cells partitioning. Learn more in the Database Excellence handbook.
What you’ll do
- Set direction and long-range plans for the database platform in line with company strategy.
- Own database capacity and availability outcomes for GitLab.com, and communicate database risk to senior leadership.
- Lead and coach three Engineering Managers and develop Staff-plus engineers into leaders.
- Drive cross-division technical decisions using data, partnering with Infrastructure, Product, Distribution, Support, Security, and FinOps.
- Partner with Product to prioritize database platform investments and make infrastructure tradeoffs in the context of product outcomes.
- Own the hiring plan, organization design, retention, and performance management for teams across regions.
- Set quarterly objectives and key results and engineering key performance indicators for the stage, and manage the database infrastructure budget with FinOps.
- Serve as an escalation point for database incidents, standardize effective processes, and keep the handbook current.
What you’ll bring
- Experience leading managers of managers, including coaching newer managers.
- Experience working hands-on with PostgreSQL at scale, including capacity planning, upgrades, replication, performance, and large production clusters.
- Experience using data to make strategic technical decisions and connect database platform investments and tradeoffs with product outcomes.
- Experience supporting software that customers run themselves, or working through the self-managed upgrade challenge.
- Experience leading backend engineering teams that own production infrastructure, applying site reliability engineering practices including service level objectives, on-call operations, incident management, cost management, and automation.
- Experience communicating clearly in writing in an asynchronous, handbook-first company.
- Experience leading globally distributed remote teams.
- Experience with Redis, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, object storage, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Terraform, Chef, managed database services, FinOps, AI-assisted engineering workflows, or platform and infrastructure organizations is a plus.
About the team
Database Excellence includes Database Architecture, Database Automation, and Self Managed Database. Three Engineering Managers lead these teams, alongside an Operations Manager. Our teams work across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India. Database Architecture provides datastore guidance, data growth controls, and the database review process. Database Automation builds PostgreSQL fleet automation, upgrades, provisioning, health monitoring, and an internal managed PostgreSQL offering. Self Managed Database is rebuilding the upgrade and migration experience for self-managed GitLab. Together, we make database services more reliable, sustainable, and easier to operate across GitLab's deployment models.
The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. See more information on our benefits and equity. Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.
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
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.
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GitLab is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. GitLab’s policies and practices relating to recruitment, employment, career development and advancement, promotion, and retirement are based solely on merit, regardless of race, color, religion, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression), national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, mental or physical disability, genetic information (including family medical history), discharge status from the military, protected veteran status (which includes disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans), or any other basis protected by law. GitLab will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. See also GitLab’s EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know during the recruiting process.