Principal Engineer, Govern

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 sub-department leadership team in collaboration with counterparts across the stage, section, and all the DevSecOps stages.

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 directly affect the Govern sub-department for example the modular monolith for a new authentication service
• Key member of the team implementing complex features such as custom roles and extending features to support cells and organizations
• Improving database performance with a focus on large data sets
• Cross-stage alignment of technical direction both inside Secure/Govern and with other stages such as Create and Verify

What you’ll bring 

• 2+ years of experience as a Staff Engineer or an Engineering Manager (or equivalent roles).
• Significant professional experience with Ruby on Rails. Significant experience with Vue.js is also a plus.
• Familiarity and high interest in learning security and compliance.
• Experience in a scaling or 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 help authenticate and give appropriate access within GitLab, as well as develop and support features to help users manage  security vulnerabilities, policies, and compliance 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.