Principal Engineer: Govern
Published on September 13, 2024
GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating the rate of human progress. This mission is integral to our culture, influencing how we hire, build products, and lead our industry. We make this possible at GitLab by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values.
GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating the rate of human progress. This mission is integral to our culture, influencing how we hire, build products, and lead our industry. We make this possible at GitLab by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values. 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 leadership team in collaboration with counterparts across the organization.
What you’ll do in this role
- Contribute to the overall direction of the Govern stage by collaborating and making proposals across several teams on their engineering work, and helping their team members make informed decisions in alignment with strategic plans
- Teach, mentor, grow, and provide advice to other domain experts and individual contributors across several teams. Advise on resourcing requirements and provide feedback on promotions into technical leadership roles
- Plan improvements and features with a 6 month view and ensure that OKR-level goals are aligned across the sub-department
- Solve technical problems of the highest scope, complexity, and ambiguity while looking for innovation opportunities between several teams and demonstrating a willingness to experiment and to boldly confront problems of large complexity and scope
- Interface with Engineering Managers and Senior Management, and enable Staff Engineers to engage on stage-level aspects of larger (sub-department wide) initiatives. Provide a point of escalation for sub-department teams facing complex technical challenges
- Propose initial technical implementations which support architectural changes that solve scaling and performance problems
- Interact with customers and other external stakeholders as a consultant and spokesperson for the work of your sub-department
- Identify slow and inefficient code across multiple products
Examples of initiatives you will work on
- Key member of the team providing architectural leadership for initiatives across the Govern sub-department including Vulnerability and Dependency Management, Compliance and Security Policies, Authentication and Authorization, SLSA L3 compliance, and AI feature development
- Performance optimization - database decomposition, technical debt initiatives, scaling of features (moving features from the project to group to instance level) to support SaaS and self-managed customers
- Improved instrumentation and metrics to inform feature development and support results for customer
- Cross-stage alignment of technical direction within Secure and Govern and across all the stages in the DevSecOps lifecycle
What you’ll bring
- Significant professional experience as a Principal or Staff Engineer, or relevant hands-on management and leadership experience, across multiple development teams.
- Significant professional experience with Ruby on Rails. Significant experience with Vue.js, GraphQL, and Postgres is also a plus.
- Expert knowledge and experience in CI/CD using DevSecOps best practices and a strong interest working across security and compliance development.
- Experience in scaling a mission-critical SaaS product.
- 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.
- Experience owning a project from concept to production, including proposal, discussion, and execution.
About the team
The Govern sub-department engineering teams work to support the Govern stage direction to authenticate and give appropriate access within GitLab, as well as develop and support features to help users manage security vulnerabilities and dependencies, security policies, compliance frameworks, and secrets management 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.
The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of listed locations only. 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, and alignment with market data. 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.
California/Colorado/Hawaii/New Jersey/New York/Washington/DC pay range
$157,900—$338,400 USD
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.