Engineering Manager, Git Team

About GitLab

GitLab is a leading platform enabling DevSecOps processes, designed to boost developer productivity, enhance operational efficiencies, minimize security and compliance risks, and accelerate digital transformations. Trusted by over 50 million users worldwide and more than half of the Fortune 100 companies, GitLab delivers faster, secure software releases.

The organization fosters a culture embracing AI to multiply productivity, encouraging all employees to incorporate AI in their daily workflows for enhanced innovation and impact. GitLab values career growth, knowledge sharing, and collaborative problem-solving with industry leaders, cultivating a workplace where every voice matters.

Role Overview

As an Engineering Manager for the Git team at GitLab, you will lead a technically advanced team responsible for the development, maintenance, and expertise around the Git version control system. Your team’s focus includes upstream Git contributions, supporting GitLab internal teams, developing new tools, improving scalability, innovating data formats, and maintaining the core Git codebase.

This position suits a leader skilled at guiding senior engineers through intricate, long-term technical initiatives, fostering a culture emphasizing technical excellence, responsibility, and ownership. You will balance the contributions to the open-source Git community with GitLab’s product and infrastructure objectives, particularly focusing on scaling Git and foundational projects.

Responsibilities

• Manage and mentor a team of senior and staff engineers dedicated to Git and its related infrastructure.
• Cultivate a team environment centered on technical rigor, responsibility, and ownership.
• Lead and ensure progress on technically complex, strategic projects emphasizing performance, scalability, and maintainability.
• Navigate the dual demands of upstream open-source development and GitLab's internal priorities.
• Facilitate growth opportunities for team members through constructive feedback, mentorship, and career guidance.
• Promote asynchronous communication and collaboration across a fully distributed, multi-timezone workforce.
• Coordinate with dependent teams such as Gitaly and collaborate with stakeholders on Git performance, feature enhancements, and roadmap planning.
• Represent the team in cross-functional dialogues related to Git’s direction, performance metrics, and scalability challenges.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing engineering teams with direct reports, including hiring, performance assessment, and career development.
• A leadership approach focused on empowering engineers, founded on reliability, consistent follow-through, and sound technical judgment.
• Capability to lead specialized engineers through ambiguous challenges, high-stakes debates, and upstream open-source development processes involving community feedback and long cycles.
• Exceptional written communication and proficiency with remote, asynchronous collaboration tools and workflows to drive work forward beyond meetings.
• Demonstrated success delivering outcomes on ambiguous, long-term technical projects by understanding fundamentals such as maintainability and technical debt.
• Hands-on expertise with version control systems, distributed systems, storage architectures, or low-level infrastructure technologies, ideally with skills in languages like C or Go.

Team and Culture

The Git team’s mission is centered on developing, maintaining, and being the technical authority on the Git VCS. This includes active upstream contribution, organization-wide support, community engagement, and ensuring the project’s sustainability.

Operating upstream-first, this highly technical team relies on collaborative communication with the Git community via mailing lists and balances protracted technical endeavors with practical product delivery.

Presently, the team’s primary efforts target scaling Git and related foundational tasks, with minimal capacity beyond these areas.

Employee Benefits

• Comprehensive health, financial, and well-being benefits
• Flexible paid time off policies
• Diverse Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity compensation and employee stock purchase options
• Professional growth and development funds
• Parental leave programs

Additional Information

Applicants from diverse backgrounds and with varying experience levels are encouraged to apply, as the hiring process considers potential beyond strict qualifications. GitLab maintains global remote hiring, with some roles having location-specific criteria. The company upholds equal employment opportunity and affirmative action policies, prohibiting discrimination or harassment based on legally protected characteristics. Reasonable accommodations are provided during recruitment upon request.