Principal Engineer

An overview of this role

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.

The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, with all team members expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact. GitLab is where careers accelerate, innovation flourishes, and every voice is valued. Our high-performance culture is driven by our values and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. Co-create the future with us as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.

*Fortune 500® is a registered trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, used under license. Claim based on GitLab data. Fortune 100 refers to the top 20% ranked companies in the 2025 Fortune 500 list, published in June 2025. Fortune and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of GitLab.

An overview of this role

GitLab is seeking a Principal Engineer to set technical direction for our most critical infrastructure platforms. This role operates at organizational scale, owning architecture, solving complex systems problems, and driving initiatives that shape how GitLab grows, performs, and remains reliable.

As a Principal Engineer, you will serve as a technical authority and force multiplier, leading architectural decisions across distributed and cloud-native systems to translate business strategy into durable technical direction. Spanning multiple teams and domains, you will bring clarity to ambiguity, raise engineering standards, and mentor senior talent while remaining accountable for real production outcomes. This is a hands-on, high-impact role for leaders who drive success through influence and shape the foundational platforms that the entire organization depends on.

Organizational Focus Areas

Principal Engineers at GitLab drive strategy across our most critical infrastructure and delivery groups. Role placement across the following tracks is determined by business need and organizational priority.

Production Engineering (Infrastructure Platforms)

This track leads high-impact platform initiatives for our multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure. You will lead the technical roadmap across key areas of Production Engineering to ensure our global operations remain resilient and modern.

Core Focus: Lead strategy and execution of our multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure in collaboration with other Platform teams..
Collaboration: Partner with Database Operations and Cells teams to align production engineering efforts with the overall platform strategy.

Group Tenant Scale (GTS)

This track builds GitLab’s next generation, multi-tenant, horizontally scalable, and resilient SaaS platform. You will architect the foundations that enable other engineering teams to build upon this platform and drive convergence among GitLab’s various platforms..

Core Focus: Lead the design and evolution of projects that enable our distributed, multi-tenant SaaS transformation, including Cells, Organizations, and OrgMover.
Distributed Architecture: Architect for zero downtime, transparent relocation, and application hardening in a massive distributed environment.
Strategic Decisions: Guide architecture decisions with availability, reliability, resiliency, performance, and cost in mind.

GitLab Delivery

The GitLab Delivery track focuses on enhancing the reliability, efficiency, and speed of GitLab’s end-to-end software delivery across all platforms and offerings.

Core Focus: Lead the platform strategy spanning Developer Experience, CI infrastructure, packaging, and release delivery across SaaS, Self-Managed, and Dedicated.
Developer Experience: Treat GitLab engineers as customers, building self-service tooling, testing infrastructure, and paved paths that increase velocity while maintaining quality.
Delivery at Scale: Architect reliable, automated pipelines that streamline how GitLab is packaged, released, and deployed across all platforms and offerings.

What You'll Do****

Own and drive the architectural direction for critical infrastructure platforms that support GitLab at global scale.
Lead the design and evolution of large platforms and distributed systems that are scalable, resilient, secure, and cost-efficient.
Serve as the technical authority on complex initiatives, guiding decisions that impact multiple teams and product areas.
Translate business and product strategy into long-term technical roadmaps and execution plans.
Drive alignment across engineering, product, and leadership by clearly communicating tradeoffs and recommendations.
Establish technical standards and architectural patterns that raise quality and consistency across the organization.
Be accountable for production outcomes, including reliability, performance, and operational excellence.
Mentor senior engineers and act as a force multiplier through influence rather than direct authority.
Operate effectively in ambiguous problem spaces where both the problem and the solution need to be defined.

What You'll Bring

Proven experience designing and evolving large-scale platforms or distributed systems in cloud-native environments.
Strong proficiency in Golang and/or Ruby, with the ability to contribute to, review, and guide core architectural changes in production codebases.
Strong architectural judgment, including the ability to balance scalability, reliability, performance, security, and cost.
Experience owning platform-level technical decisions that impacted multiple teams or an entire engineering domain.
Solid understanding of Kubernetes-based environments as a production platform, including how they influence system design, deployment models, reliability, and operational complexity.
Experience being accountable for production systems, not just design recommendations.
Ability to author and drive long-term technical strategy and multi-month roadmaps.
Track record of leading through influence and shaping technical direction without direct authority.
Comfort making high-impact technical decisions, including build vs buy vs partner tradeoffs.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers, leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.

About the team

The Principal Engineer role sits within GitLab’s Infrastructure Platforms organization, working across multiple teams to shape how our platform scales and operates. This group is responsible for some of GitLab’s most critical systems, including the multi-tenant SaaS platform, core delivery pipelines, and the underlying infrastructure that powers millions of users. As a Principal Engineer, you’ll define technical direction, guide architectural decisions, and ensure our platforms remain resilient, performant, and modern. The team operates fully remotely and collaborates asynchronously across time zones, grounded in GitLab’s values of transparency, autonomy, and open communication. You’ll help the organization tackle complex distributed systems challenges at scale while mentoring other engineers and building a culture focused on reliability, efficiency, and continuous improvement.

The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. 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, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. 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.

United States Salary Range

$171,400—$367,200 USD

How GitLab will support you

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.

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.

Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.

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.

Details

Location

Remote

Salary

$171,400 – $367,200/year

Technologies

Ruby

Kubernetes

An overview of this role

Organizational Focus Areas

Production Engineering (Infrastructure Platforms)

Core Focus: Lead strategy and execution of our multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure in collaboration with other Platform teams..
Collaboration: Partner with Database Operations and Cells teams to align production engineering efforts with the overall platform strategy.

Group Tenant Scale (GTS)

Core Focus: Lead the design and evolution of projects that enable our distributed, multi-tenant SaaS transformation, including Cells, Organizations, and OrgMover.
Distributed Architecture: Architect for zero downtime, transparent relocation, and application hardening in a massive distributed environment.
Strategic Decisions: Guide architecture decisions with availability, reliability, resiliency, performance, and cost in mind.

GitLab Delivery

The GitLab Delivery track focuses on enhancing the reliability, efficiency, and speed of GitLab’s end-to-end software delivery across all platforms and offerings.

Core Focus: Lead the platform strategy spanning Developer Experience, CI infrastructure, packaging, and release delivery across SaaS, Self-Managed, and Dedicated.
Developer Experience: Treat GitLab engineers as customers, building self-service tooling, testing infrastructure, and paved paths that increase velocity while maintaining quality.
Delivery at Scale: Architect reliable, automated pipelines that streamline how GitLab is packaged, released, and deployed across all platforms and offerings.

What You'll Do****

Own and drive the architectural direction for critical infrastructure platforms that support GitLab at global scale.
Lead the design and evolution of large platforms and distributed systems that are scalable, resilient, secure, and cost-efficient.
Serve as the technical authority on complex initiatives, guiding decisions that impact multiple teams and product areas.
Translate business and product strategy into long-term technical roadmaps and execution plans.
Drive alignment across engineering, product, and leadership by clearly communicating tradeoffs and recommendations.
Establish technical standards and architectural patterns that raise quality and consistency across the organization.
Be accountable for production outcomes, including reliability, performance, and operational excellence.
Mentor senior engineers and act as a force multiplier through influence rather than direct authority.
Operate effectively in ambiguous problem spaces where both the problem and the solution need to be defined.

What You'll Bring

Proven experience designing and evolving large-scale platforms or distributed systems in cloud-native environments.
Strong proficiency in Golang and/or Ruby, with the ability to contribute to, review, and guide core architectural changes in production codebases.
Strong architectural judgment, including the ability to balance scalability, reliability, performance, security, and cost.
Experience owning platform-level technical decisions that impacted multiple teams or an entire engineering domain.
Solid understanding of Kubernetes-based environments as a production platform, including how they influence system design, deployment models, reliability, and operational complexity.
Experience being accountable for production systems, not just design recommendations.
Ability to author and drive long-term technical strategy and multi-month roadmaps.
Track record of leading through influence and shaping technical direction without direct authority.
Comfort making high-impact technical decisions, including build vs buy vs partner tradeoffs.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers, leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.

About the team

United States Salary Range

$171,400—$367,200 USD

How GitLab will support you

Privacy Policy: Please review our Recruitment Privacy Policy. Your privacy is important to us.