Director of Engineering, Security Risk Management

GitLab

2d•Remote

About The Position

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 We're seeking an exceptional Engineering Lead to drive the evolution of GitLab's Security Risk Management (SRM) stage into a world-class platform for vulnerability analysis and remediation at enterprise scale. This is a rare opportunity to architect and build distributed systems that will fundamentally change how large organizations approach application security and developer security workflows. As the SRM Stage Lead, you'll be responsible for transforming our engineering culture toward high-performance distributed systems while delivering an exceptional user experience for both Application Security professionals and Developers. You'll own the technical strategy for processing, analyzing, and remediating vulnerabilities across massive codebases and complex enterprise environments.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years leading distributed systems at scale (>100M daily operations)
Deep expertise in designing and operating high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems with complex data models
Proven experience with polyglot persistence strategies, including relational databases (PostgreSQL, Cloud Spanner), time-series databases, graph databases, and distributed key-value stores
Strong background in stream processing frameworks (Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, or similar) and event-driven architectures
Hands-on experience with container orchestration (Kubernetes) and cloud-native observability stacks
Security domain knowledge with understanding of vulnerability assessment, static analysis, dependency scanning, or application security testing
Proven track record of leading and growing high-performing engineering teams (40+ engineers)
Experience transforming engineering culture and establishing technical excellence standards in fast-growing organizations
Strong technical communication skills with ability to present complex architectural decisions to executive stakeholders
Collaborative leadership style with experience working across multiple engineering teams and product stakeholders
Systems thinking approach to complex technical problems with demonstrated ability to make appropriate trade-offs between performance, scalability, and maintainability
Experience with A/B testing frameworks and data-driven decision making in technical contexts
Track record of successfully delivering large-scale technical migrations or architectural transformations
Startup or high-growth company experience with ability to balance technical debt with rapid feature delivery

Responsibilities

Design distributed systems architecture capable of processing vulnerability data from thousands of repositories, millions of commits, and complex dependency graphs in real-time
Drive storage system decisions for multi-petabyte security datasets, balancing query performance, cost efficiency, and data retention requirements across time-series, graph, and document storage paradigms
Architect scalable analysis pipelines that can ingest vulnerability feeds, correlate findings across multiple security tools, and provide actionable intelligence to both security teams and individual developers
Lead the technical evolution from monolithic security scanning to microservices-based, event-driven vulnerability management systems
Champion high-performance systems thinking throughout the team, establishing patterns for horizontal scaling, efficient resource utilization, and fault-tolerant distributed computing
Establish technical standards for system observability, chaos engineering, and performance optimization in security-critical systems
Mentor and develop senior engineers in distributed systems design, database optimization, and large-scale system architecture
Drive architectural decision records (ADRs) for major technical decisions, particularly around data storage, processing frameworks, and system boundaries
Own the end-to-end user journey (in partnership with PM) for both AppSec professionals managing enterprise-wide risk and developers receiving actionable security feedback in their workflow
Design APIs and interfaces that abstract complexity while providing the power and flexibility that security professionals demand
Collaborate with Product Management, UX and Product Design to translate complex technical capabilities into intuitive user experiences
Establish feedback loops with large enterprise customers to ensure our technical solutions scale with their organizational complexity
Evaluate and integrate cutting-edge technologies in areas such as graph databases, stream processing, machine learning inference at scale, and distributed caching, in collaboration with GitLab’s Infrastructure, Data and AI teams
Own the technical roadmap for vulnerability correlation, risk scoring, and automated remediation workflows
Drive partnerships with other GitLab stages to ensure seamless integration across the DevSecOps platform
Lead incident response for availability and performance issues in customer-facing security systems