Engineering Manager, Database Change Management

As Engineering Manager, Database Change Management, you’ll lead a remote backend engineering team in the Database Excellence stage. The team owns database health and the database upgrade experience across GitLab.com and self-managed deployments. You’ll guide two missions at once: keeping one of the largest PostgreSQL installations in the world within its capacity limits, and delivering a multi-year replacement of GitLab’s database migration system so customer upgrades become dramatically faster and safer. Reporting to the Database Excellence stage’s engineering leader, you’ll build and grow a new engineering cluster in India, keep the long-horizon platform program on track, and help the team maintain production health through fully asynchronous, handbook-first ways of working.

Some examples of our projects:

• Replacing GitLab’s sequential database migration system with a dependency graph model and three-phase upgrades, helping self-managed customers stay current with fewer upgrade stops
• Improving database health monitoring, cloud-managed database observability, and saturation and capacity forecasting for GitLab.com and self-managed deployments

What you’ll do

• Lead a distributed team of backend engineers working fully asynchronously across time zones.
• Hire, onboard, and develop an India-based engineering cluster, including intermediate engineers and a senior technical anchor.
• Balance the team’s database health responsibilities with the multi-quarter migration system replacement so both missions continue to make progress.
• Protect the replatforming program’s critical path by limiting production interruptions for engineers focused on it while meeting the team’s operational commitments.
• Coach engineers from intermediate through senior levels, supporting their growth, ownership, and impact.
• Run the team async-first through written decision records, visible priorities, and management practices that work when team members share few or no working hours.
• Partner with Distribution, Quality Assurance (QA), database framework teams, Database Architecture, Database Automation, and infrastructure leadership.
• Represent the team’s capacity, priorities, risks, and delivery status to senior engineering leadership., * Production PostgreSQL experience, including capacity planning and enough technical depth to contribute credibly to migration system and reliability design discussions without needing to own the designs., We work fully asynchronously and handbook-first with Database Architecture, Database Automation, Distribution, and QA. Our work helps address the fact that roughly a third of self-managed customers are two or more upgrade stops behind., What is your current country of residence?* Select… Are you subject to any employment agreements and/or post-employment restrictions with your current employer or a past employer?* Select… It is important to us to create an accessible and inclusive interview experience. Please let us know if there are any adjustments we can make to assist you during the hiring and interview process. What is your GitLab username? Will you now or in the future require sponsorship for a visa to remain in your current location?* Select… Have you previously worked at or consulted for GitLab?* Select…

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• Experience leading a long-horizon platform or infrastructure program alongside operational responsibilities and keeping both on track.
• Hiring and team-building experience, including experience standing up a new team or site cluster, or closely related work.
• Strong written communication skills and experience using writing as a primary management tool.
• Experience coaching and developing backend engineers across multiple levels.
• Ability to set priorities and protect focus while maintaining production health and meeting operational commitments.
• Experience collaborating cross-functionally with software engineering, quality, distribution, database, and infrastructure partners.

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.