Who you are

- 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

- 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

What the job involves

- As Director of Engineering, Database Excellence, you will lead the Database Excellence stage and report to the Vice President of Data Engineering

- 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

- 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

Benefits

- We offer perks 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

📌 Director of Engineering (Canada)
🏢 GitLab
📍 Canada