An overview of this role

As a Senior Director, Technical Program Management, you will oversee GitLab’s Engineering technical program management function and help the Engineering division deliver complex, high-impact work with more clarity, consistency, and speed. Reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer, you’ll guide an established team of Technical Program Managers, shape the operating model for the function, and drive strategic programs that span horizontal productivity initiatives (Duo Agent Platform), customer-facing feature delivery, Customer Zero adoption, and security vulnerability remediation.

What you’ll do

• Lead a global team of Technical Program Managers aligned to Engineering verticals including AI, Infrastructure, Data and Product Engineering.
• Own the technical program management operating model, including team structure, hiring approach, and career framework for the function.
• Drive end-to-end delivery of strategic cross-functional programs across infrastructure, security, product, and go-to-market teams.
• Define program scope, milestones, success criteria, and staffing plans to move work from ambiguity to clear execution.
• Establish program metrics focused on non-linear productivity gains and build a consistent, data-led reporting practice.
• Partner with Engineering counterparts as an accountability partner for priorities, key choices, and follow-through.
• Influence strategic planning for staffing, timelines, and cross-organizational priorities.
• Create a reliable cadence for initiative reviews, prioritization, and staffing management across the technical program management function.

What you’ll bring

• Experience in technical program management, engineering leadership, or a combination of both in complex technical organizations.
• Background as an engineer or strong technical foundation that builds credibility with engineering teams and stakeholders.
• Experience building, scaling, and developing a technical program management function or team.
• Track record delivering complex programs across multiple teams with urgency and a clear focus on customer impact.
• Ability to define meaningful program metrics, use data to identify gaps, and present clear recommendations.
• Strength in written and asynchronous communication within a distributed, all-remote environment.
• Experience working across infrastructure, security, and platform engineering domains.
• Ability to influence without formal authority and collaborate effectively with engineering, product, marketing, sales, and legal teams, including through transferable experience from adjacent leadership paths.

About the team

The Engineering technical program management function supports programs across nearly every stage of GitLab by partnering with Engineering leaders in verticals aligned to vice president areas. We work asynchronously across regions and focus on creating clear execution paths for broad, interdependent work across GitLab.

An overview of this role

As a Staff Technical Program Manager at GitLab, you'll drive some of our most important cross-functional portfolios and programs across the engineering organization. This role sits at the center of complex, cross-team work spanning multiple functions, where success comes from creating clarity, managing cross-functional coordination, and helping teams deliver meaningful outcomes over multiple quarters. You'll partner closely with engineering and product organizations to move high-priority initiatives forward, especially in areas where scope is broad, stakeholders are many, and the path ahead isn't fully defined.

This is a role for someone who can work comfortably in ambiguity while still bringing structure, momentum, and accountability to large programs. You'll operate with strong judgment and latitude, helping key stakeholders make informed choices, surfacing risks early, and keeping execution aligned to business goals. At GitLab, this role has grown in strategic importance, and you'll directly influence priorities and decisions across organizational boundaries while advancing programs that shape how our teams build and scale the platform.

Some examples of our projects:

• Driving portfolio-level planning and execution for high-priority engineering programs across research and development
• Coordinating multi-quarter initiatives that require alignment across engineering, product, and partner teams such as Monetization, Fulfillment, Utilization, and Legal

What you’ll do

• Lead the planning, execution, and delivery of high-priority, cross-functional programs across GitLab's engineering organization.
• Operate at the portfolio level to identify dependencies, track progress, manage risk, and help teams deliver against defined objectives, milestones, and measurable outcomes over multiple quarters.
• Partner directly with Engineering Directors, Vice Presidents, Product leadership, and technical leaders to align on priorities, program goals, trade-offs, and execution plans.
• Create structure in ambiguous spaces by defining program frameworks, decision points, operating cadences, and communication plans that help teams move forward.
• Translate technical architecture discussions, infrastructure considerations, and system dependencies into clear program plans that teams can execute against.
• Drive stakeholder coordination across organizational boundaries, including collaboration with teams such as Monetization, Fulfillment, Utilization, Legal, and senior individual contributors across engineering stages.
• Communicate program status, risks, and decisions clearly to senior stakeholders and executive audiences, with a focus on concise updates and actionable next steps.
• Strengthen how programs are run by improving planning practices, supporting outcome-oriented execution, and helping the teams you support work more effectively at scale.

What you’ll bring

• Proven technical program management experience, including operating at the Staff or Senior Staff level.
• Proven success leading large, complex, cross-functional programs in a fast-paced, distributed engineering environment.
• Strong technical fluency, with the ability to engage credibly with engineers and architects on topics such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), cloud infrastructure, application programming interfaces (APIs), and distributed systems.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills and strong written and verbal communication, especially when working with senior engineering and product leaders.
• Comfort using program and project management tools such as GitLab, Jira, or similar platforms to manage execution and visibility.
• Ability to read technical discussions, identify dependencies and risks, and turn complex inputs into practical plans, milestones, and decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership of complex programs, ask thoughtful questions, make sound decisions, collaborate constructively across teams, and move work forward in ambiguous environments.

About the team

The Technical Program Management team helps GitLab deliver complex work across research and development by bringing focus, coordination, and execution discipline to programs that span multiple teams. We partner closely with engineering and product leaders to support initiatives that are too broad or interdependent to be solved within a single function. The work is high visibility and high impact, and it plays an important role in helping GitLab scale how we plan, prioritize, and deliver.

You'll join a small team that works in an all-remote, async-first environment and values direct communication, trust, and shared ownership. We're collaborative and outcomes-focused, with space for autonomy in how work gets done. You'll work alongside other technical program managers and build strong partnerships with leaders across engineering and product, while helping connect efforts across business-critical areas. We support one another by sharing context early, flagging risks quickly, and staying focused on practical progress over perfect process.