Principal Engineer, GitLab
Infrastructure Platforms
$171.4-367.2k
Plus Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
One DevOps platform
Be an early applicant
One DevOps platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$171.4-367.2k
Plus Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make it so that everyone can contribute. When everyone can contribute, users become contributors and we greatly increase the rate of innovation.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience designing and evolving large-scale platforms or distributed systems in cloud-native environments
- Strong proficiency in Golang and/or Ruby, with the ability to contribute to, review, and guide core architectural changes in production codebases
- Strong architectural judgment, including the ability to balance scalability, reliability, performance, security, and cost
- Experience owning platform-level technical decisions that impacted multiple teams or an entire engineering domain
- Solid understanding of Kubernetes-based environments as a production platform, including how they influence system design, deployment models, reliability, and operational complexity
- Experience being accountable for production systems, not just design recommendations
- Ability to author and drive long-term technical strategy and multi-month roadmaps
- Track record of leading through influence and shaping technical direction without direct authority
- Comfort making high-impact technical decisions, including build vs buy vs partner tradeoffs
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers, leadership, and non-technical stakeholders
- Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement
- If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application
What the job involves
- GitLab is seeking a Principal Engineer to set technical direction for our most critical infrastructure platforms. This role operates at organizational scale, owning architecture, solving complex systems problems, and driving initiatives that shape how GitLab grows, performs, and remains reliable
- As a Principal Engineer, you will serve as a technical authority and force multiplier, leading architectural decisions across distributed and cloud-native systems to translate business strategy into durable technical direction
- Spanning multiple teams and domains, you will bring clarity to ambiguity, raise engineering standards, and mentor senior talent while remaining accountable for real production outcomes
- This is a hands-on, high-impact role for leaders who drive success through influence and shape the foundational platforms that the entire organization depends on
- Principal Engineers at GitLab drive strategy across our most critical infrastructure and delivery groups. Role placement across the following tracks is determined by business need and organizational priority
- This track leads high-impact platform initiatives for our multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure. You will lead the technical roadmap across key areas of Production Engineering to ensure our global operations remain resilient and modern
- Core Focus: Lead strategy and execution of our multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure in collaboration with other Platform teams.
- Collaboration: Partner with Database Operations and Cells teams to align production engineering efforts with the overall platform strategy
- This track builds GitLab’s next generation, multi-tenant, horizontally scalable, and resilient SaaS platform. You will architect the foundations that enable other engineering teams to build upon this platform and drive convergence among GitLab’s various platforms.
- Core Focus: Lead the design and evolution of projects that enable our distributed, multi-tenant SaaS transformation, including Cells, Organizations, and OrgMover
- Distributed Architecture: Architect for zero downtime, transparent relocation, and application hardening in a massive distributed environment
- Strategic Decisions: Guide architecture decisions with availability, reliability, resiliency, performance, and cost in mind
- The GitLab Delivery track focuses on enhancing the reliability, efficiency, and speed of GitLab’s end-to-end software delivery across all platforms and offerings
- Core Focus: Lead the platform strategy spanning Developer Experience, CI infrastructure, packaging, and release delivery across SaaS, Self-Managed, and Dedicated
- Developer Experience: Treat GitLab engineers as customers, building self-service tooling, testing infrastructure, and paved paths that increase velocity while maintaining quality
- Delivery at Scale: Architect reliable, automated pipelines that streamline how GitLab is packaged, released, and deployed across all platforms and offerings
- Own and drive the architectural direction for critical infrastructure platforms that support GitLab at global scale
- Lead the design and evolution of large platforms and distributed systems that are scalable, resilient, secure, and cost-efficient
- Serve as the technical authority on complex initiatives, guiding decisions that impact multiple teams and product areas
- Translate business and product strategy into long-term technical roadmaps and execution plans
- Drive alignment across engineering, product, and leadership by clearly communicating tradeoffs and recommendations
- Establish technical standards and architectural patterns that raise quality and consistency across the organization
- Be accountable for production outcomes, including reliability, performance, and operational excellence
- Mentor senior engineers and act as a force multiplier through influence rather than direct authority
- Operate effectively in ambiguous problem spaces where both the problem and the solution need to be defined
- The Principal Engineer role sits within GitLab’s Infrastructure Platforms organization, working across multiple teams to shape how our platform scales and operates
- This group is responsible for some of GitLab’s most critical systems, including the multi-tenant SaaS platform, core delivery pipelines, and the underlying infrastructure that powers millions of users
- As a Principal Engineer, you’ll define technical direction, guide architectural decisions, and ensure our platforms remain resilient, performant, and modern
- The team operates fully remotely and collaborates asynchronously across time zones, grounded in GitLab’s values of transparency, autonomy, and open communication
- You’ll help the organization tackle complex distributed systems challenges at scale while mentoring other engineers and building a culture focused on reliability, efficiency, and continuous improvement
Our take
GitLab is an open-source collaboration platform for developers. It enables teams to build code quickly from anywhere without compromising on security or quality. GitLab already has an estimated 30M+ users from all over the world.
According to a 2021 GitLab report, 60% of developers can release code 2x faster with DevOps platforms that bring teams together and accelerate processes. It stands out by catering to programmers of all experiences. Gitlab's version control system helps streamline the process of creating, maintaining, and deploying code, whoever you are.
GitLab was in the right place to capitalise on the recent trend toward rapid digital transformation and remote working. This trend is expected to grow, and with it, GitLab's popularity. With its successful 2021 IPO and the patronage of major brands such as Nasdaq and Jaguar Land Rover, GitLab is expected to solidify its position as the go-to platform for development teams.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
15% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Sep 2019
$268m
SERIES E
Dec 2018
$20m
SERIES D
Total funding: $434.9m
Company benefits
- We offer benefits to manage your health, wealth, and well-being regardless of location
- Flexibility in schedule to be there for life’s important moments
- Equity compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan offered
- Generous Paid Time Off
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Sid Sijbrandij
(CEO)Studied Physics at the University of Twente. Interned at P&G and IBM. Was Lead Architect at the Netherlands' Ministry of Justice from 2009 to 2012. Founded app store Comcoaster in 2008, and then co-founded GitLab in 2012.
Share this job
View 72 more jobs at GitLab