GitLab · 3 days ago
Senior Engineering Manager, Non-Linear Productivity
United States+2 more
Full-time
Remote
Lead/Staff
$190K/yr - $245K/yrGitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, enabling organizations to enhance developer productivity and operational efficiency. The Senior Engineering Manager will focus on driving non-linear productivity by building a team to identify and resolve friction points in GitLab's software development lifecycle.
Cloud ComputingSoftwareEnterprise SoftwareSaaSCloud SecurityDeveloper ToolsDevOpsOpen Source
Responsibilities
Define and continuously refine the operating model for the non-linear productivity pilot: what 'friction' means, how it's diagnosed, and how fixes are prioritized against the three system-level metrics
Identify and prioritize non-linear productivity opportunities (step-change fixes rather than incremental gains) across the SDLC, including flaky tests, review latency, pipeline reliability, tooling gaps, and context loss for both human and agentic contributors
Translate an intentionally broad, ambiguous mandate ('find the friction, fix it at the root') into a concrete, time-boxed roadmap with defined milestones for a 3-month pilot window
Personally source, evaluate, and select 4 exceptional engineers for the pilot squad. You own this hiring bar directly rather than delegating it to a pipeline
Negotiate allocation models (100% vs. partial/dual-hat) with each engineer's current EM, balancing team commitments against the pilot's needs
Set the technical direction and working norms for a small, fast-moving team: how work is scoped, how decisions get made, and how progress gets reported
Mentor the engineers on this team in root-cause diagnosis and shift-left thinking, raising the bar for rigor versus reaching for the nearest patch
Lead hands-on investigation to instrument and baseline the three top-level metrics (MRPM, pipeline success rate, pipeline latency) so the org has an honest starting point before any fix is proposed
Diagnose the highest-leverage friction points dragging each metric down, and validate hypotheses with real data before committing team time to a fix
Design and implement fixes that compound, including shift-left quality changes, tooling investment, and better context and interfaces for both humans and agents, rather than one-off patches
Stay hands-on enough to review architecture, dig into pipeline internals, and unblock the team on hard technical problems directly
Own a small set of high-impact friction areas as pathfinders, driving each from diagnosis through fix to measurable metric movement
Work directly with affected engineering teams to ensure fixes are trusted, adopted, and don't quietly get reverted or worked around
Track and report metric movement honestly, including when a bet didn't pay off
Capture and codify reusable patterns and playbooks so that fixes validated by this team can be adopted org-wide with minimal friction
Set a cadence for reporting impact back to EM peers and leadership, framed around metric movement rather than activity
Ensure the pilot's fixes degrade gracefully and don't introduce new reliability risk into CI/CD systems that other teams depend on
Help define what 'graduation' from pilot to permanent function looks like, and build the case (or the honest counter-case) based on results
Qualification
Required
Track record leading small, high-autonomy engineering teams, ideally in developer productivity, CI/CD, platform, or infrastructure reliability, measured on system-level outcomes rather than feature delivery
Deep comfort with CI/CD and build systems. You understand why pipelines flake, why they're slow, and what actually moves success-rate and latency numbers versus what just feels like progress
Demonstrated root-cause instinct and a bar for talent over headcount: you'd rather run understaffed than fill a seat with someone good-enough
Comfort operating under metrics-driven accountability, including publicly baselining a number and reporting honestly against it
Strong executive-level communication. This pilot has direct visibility to engineering leadership
Preferred
Experience with agentic or AI-assisted development workflows, and a view on where human/agent friction shows up differently than pure human friction
Prior experience running a defined-window pilot or 0 to 1 initiative with explicit success criteria
Familiarity with GitLab's own CI/CD internals, or equivalent depth on another large-scale build/test system
Benefits
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
Company
GitLab
GitLab is a web-based Git repository manager that offers a variety of features for software development teams.
Founded in 2014
1001-5000 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$413.5MKey Investors
Goldman Sachs,ICONIQ GrowthICONIQ GrowthGoogle Ventures
2021-10-14IPO
2019-09-17Series E· $268M
2018-09-19Series D· $100M
Leadership Team
Bill Staples
Chief Executive Officer
Sid Sijbrandij
Co-founder and Executive Chair
Recent News
Help Net Security
2026-07-22
2026-07-21
2026-07-20
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