Engineering Manager, Cell Infrastructure

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An overview of this role

As Manager / Senior Manager, Cell Infrastructure, you'll help shape the foundation that lets GitLab run reliably across multiple cloud providers in the agentic era. As more enterprise customers adopt AI-driven development workflows, GitLab needs a cell-based infrastructure that can scale horizontally, support strong reliability, and operate with clear cost efficiency. In this role, you'll report to the VP Engineering, Platform Scale & Architecture and lead a 0 to 1 effort to build the control layer that determines how GitLab cells are provisioned, placed, and operated across clouds.

This is a high-impact leadership role where you'll define architecture as much as you'll deliver it. In your first year, you'll help establish the technical direction for multi-cloud cell infrastructure, build and grow the team based on level, and create the operational model for reliability, developer enablement, and cost visibility. You'll work across platform, infrastructure, CI/CD, and AI-related areas, including support for the Duo Agent Platform, to make sure the cellular substrate can meet GitLab's next stage of scale.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design and delivery of multi-cloud cell placement and orchestration systems that support GitLab's cell-based architecture.
• Build and grow the engineering team responsible for cell infrastructure, spanning architecture, delivery, and production operations.
• Drive infrastructure cost visibility and optimization by partnering with finance and platform teams to make unit economics part of the system design.
• Own the reliability model for cell infrastructure, including on-call practices, incident response, and postmortem follow-through.
• Partner with adjacent teams such as Git infrastructure, Artifact Registry, Duo Agent Platform, and CI/CD to support their scaling and deployment needs.
• Define and evolve architectural decisions for cross-cloud routing, data residency, and infrastructure portability.
• Develop platform capabilities and developer tooling that let teams deploy on top of cell infrastructure without needing to understand its internal complexity.
• Represent the team in cross-functional planning with senior engineering stakeholders on GitLab's broader cells and multi-cloud strategy.

What you’ll bring

• Hands-on experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems in production using cell-based architecture.
• Operational ownership of highly reliable systems, including experience with on-call, incident management, and site reliability engineering practices.
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems fundamentals such as consistency models, partitioning and sharding, failure modes, and multi-region or multi-cloud tradeoffs.
• Experience leading engineering teams in a distributed environment, with scope aligned to either a single team or a broader multi-team organization.
• Ability to hire, support, and develop engineers, including senior individual contributors and, at the senior manager level, engineering managers.
• Experience building platform capabilities or developer tools that other engineering teams use to build and deploy software.
• Comfort working in ambiguity and helping define direction in an early-stage build rather than stepping into a maintenance-focused role; transferable experience from comparable large-scale infrastructure, multi-cloud platforms, FinOps, AI-supporting systems, or major architecture transitions is welcome.
• Clear cross-functional communication skills and the ability to work effectively with VP-level and CTO-level stakeholders.

About the team

The Platform Scale & Architecture team focuses on evolving the core infrastructure patterns that let GitLab scale securely, reliably, and efficiently as customer and product demands grow. Within that group, the Cell Infrastructure area focuses on the platform layer behind cell provisioning, placement, routing, and operations across cloud environments. Depending on level, you'll oversee either a focused team working on one part of the problem or a broader set of teams across the cell infrastructure space. We work asynchronously across regions and partner closely with Git infrastructure, Artifact Registry, Duo Agent Platform, and CI/CD teams to support GitLab's broader multi-cloud strategy. A key focus for us is balancing portability, data residency, reliability, and cost as GitLab moves further into a cell-based architecture. For more on how this organization works, see Team Handbook Page.

How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• Flexible Paid Time Off
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental Leave

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.

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