Principal Engineer, Govern

The GitLab DevSecOps platform empowers 100,000+ organizations to deliver software faster and more efficiently. We are one of the world’s largest all-remote companies with 2,000+ team members and values that foster a culture where people embrace the belief that everyone can contribute. Learn more about Life at GitLab.

An overview of this role

The Principal Engineer, Govern provides technical leadership for the engineering teams in the sub-department, working closely as a key member of the sub-department leadership team in collaboration with counterparts across the stage, section, and all the DevSecOps stages.

What you’ll do in this role

• Contribute to the overall direction of the Govern stage.
• Collaborate and make proposals across several teams on their engineering work, and help their team members make informed decisions in alignment with strategic plans.
• Expose technology and organizational needs across sub-departments.
• Teach, mentor, grow, and provide advice to other domain experts, individual contributors, across several teams in their sub-department.
• Play a central role in technical, business, and organizational contributions across sub-departments.
• Plan improvements and features with a 6 month view.
• Solves technical problems of the highest scope, complexity, and ambiguity
• Interfaces with Engineering Managers and Senior management, and enables Staff Engineers to engage on stage-level aspects of larger (sub-department wide) initiatives.
• Looks for innovation opportunities between several teams with a willingness to experiment and to boldly confront problems of large complexity and scope.
• Proposes initial technical implementations which support architectural changes that solve scaling and performance problems.
• Ensures that OKR-level goals are aligned across several teams in their sub-department.
• Guides conversations to remove blockers and encourage collaboration across teams.
• Provides a point of escalation for sub-department teams facing complex technical challenges.
• Attain a measurable impact on the work of sub-department teams.
• Interact with customers and other external stakeholders as a consultant and spokesperson for the work of your sub-department.
• Exposes the work of the sub-department and their business impact internally.
• Knowledgeable in all specialities practiced within the department or sub-department.
• Identifies slow and inefficient code across multiple products.
• Vast knowledge of server side programming languages and their frameworks.
• Improves engineering standards, tooling, and processes.
• Helps team members of all levels understand their organization's domain and technology through clear and effective communication.

Examples of initiatives you will work on

• Key member of the team providing architectural leadership for initiatives that directly affect the Govern sub-department, for example the modular monolith for a new authentication service.
• Key member of the team implementing complex features such as custom roles and extending features to support cells and organizations.
• Improving database performance with a focus on large data sets.
• Cross-stage alignment of technical direction both inside Secure/Govern and with other stages such as Create and Verify.

What you’ll bring

• 2+ years of experience as a Staff Engineer or an Engineering Manager (or equivalent roles).
• Significant professional experience with Ruby on Rails. Significant experience with Vue.js is also a plus.
• Familiarity and high interest in learning security and compliance.
• Experience in a scaling or mission-critical SaaS product.
• Proficiency in the English language, both written and verbal, sufficient for success in a remote and largely asynchronous work environment.
• Demonstrated capacity to clearly and concisely communicate complex problems and solutions.
• Experience with performance and optimization problems and a demonstrated ability to both diagnose and prevent these problems.
• Comfort working in a highly agile, intensely iterative software development process.
• Positive and solution-oriented mindset.
• Experience owning a project from concept to production, including proposal, discussion, and execution.
• Self-motivated and self-managing, with strong organizational skills.
• Makes responsible decisions and evaluates tradeoffs impacting their organization and various aspects of the business.
• Exhibits a deep understanding of their organization's features, how customers use them, and how they fit into the larger business.
• Improves processes at the organization level.
• Recognizes good solutions to complex problems impacting multiple domains and clearly explains their merits to relevant stakeholders.
• Unblocks and enables team members and counterparts across multiple teams.
• Participates in processes that address complex technical challenges, such as the Architecture Design Process, as a DRI, and as a coach.
• Advises on resourcing requirements and provides feedback on promotions into technical leadership roles.
• Able to deliver results despite starting from unclear requirements.
• Works frequently with other teams to coordinate major changes leading to efficient solutions.
• Performs Code Reviews across the GitLab Codebase on a regular cadence.

About the team

The Govern sub-department engineering teams work to support the Govern stage direction to help authenticate and give appropriate access within GitLab, as well as develop and support features to help users manage security vulnerabilities, policies, and compliance across their organization.

What’s great about working at GitLab?

The culture here at GitLab is something we’re incredibly proud of. Some of the benefits you’ll be entitled to vary by the region or country you’re in. However, all GitLab team members are fully remote and receive a "no ask, must tell" paid-time-off policy, where we don’t count the number of days you take off annually -- instead, we focus on your results. You can work the hours you choose, enabled by our asynchronous approach to communication.

How GitLab will support you

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• All remote, asynchronous work environment
• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and development budget
• Parental leave
• Home office support

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 for 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.

Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.

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.