Senior Engineering Manager, Developer Productivity

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. About the role Senior Engineering Managers at GitLab own outcomes for a defined engineering domain, build and grow the team that delivers them, and are trusted to operate with significant autonomy against a clear mandate. This Senior Engineering Manager role focuses on driving non-linear productivity by building and leading a small, hand-picked team of engineers who find and fix the highest-leverage friction points in GitLab's own SDLC. Rather than incremental team management, this is a 0 to 1 team-building mandate. You will personally recruit 4 exceptional engineers, define how they work, and drive them through a root-cause, shift-left approach to engineering productivity, measured in system-level metrics (MRPM, pipeline success rate, pipeline latency), not story points or activity. You will act as a bridge between the pilot squad, engineering managers whose teams are affected by friction points, and leadership, ensuring the team's fixes deliver durable, measurable value before any of it is proposed as a permanent function. This role reports to a VP-level engineering leader. What you'll do Vision & Strategy * Define and continuously refine the operating model for the non-linear productivity pilot: what "friction" means, how it's diagnosed, and how fixes are prioritized against the three system-level metrics. * Identify and prioritize non-linear productivity opportunities (step-change fixes rather than incremental gains) across the SDLC, including flaky tests, review latency, pipeline reliability, tooling gaps, and context loss for both human and agentic contributors. * Translate an intentionally broad, ambiguous mandate ("find the friction, fix it at the root") into a concrete, time-boxed roadmap with defined milestones for a 3-month pilot window. Team Building & Leadership * Personally source, evaluate, and select 4 exceptional engineers for the pilot squad. You own this hiring bar directly rather than delegating it to a pipeline. * Negotiate allocation models (100% vs. partial/dual-hat) with each engineer's current EM, balancing team commitments against the pilot's needs. * Set the technical direction and working norms for a small, fast-moving team: how work is scoped, how decisions get made, and how progress gets reported. * Mentor the engineers on this team in root-cause diagnosis and shift-left thinking, raising the bar for rigor versus reaching for the nearest patch. Deep Technical Exploration & Experimentation * Lead hands-on investigation to instrument and baseline the three top-level metrics (MRPM, pipeline success rate, pipeline latency) so the org has an honest starting point before any fix is proposed. * Diagnose the highest-leverage friction points dragging each metric down, and validate hypotheses with real data before committing team time to a fix. * Design and implement fixes that compound, including shift-left quality changes, tooling investment, and better context and interfaces for both humans and agents, rather than one-off patches. * Stay hands-on enough to review architecture, dig into pipeline internals, and unblock the team on hard technical problems directly. Internal Adoption & Non-Linear Productivity * Own a small set of high-impact friction areas as pathfinders, driving each from diagnosis through fix to measurable metric movement. * Work directly with affected engineering teams to ensure fixes are trusted, adopted, and don't quietly get reverted or worked around. * Track and report metric movement honestly, including when a bet didn't pay off. * Capture and codify reusable patterns and playbooks so that fixes validated by this team can be adopted org-wide with minimal friction. Operations, Risk & Enablement * Set a cadence for reporting impact back to EM peers and leadership, framed around metric movement rather than activity. * Ensure the pilot's fixes degrade gracefully and don't introduce new reliability risk into CI/CD systems that other teams depend on. * Help define what "graduation" from pilot to permanent function looks like, and build the case (or the honest counter-case) based on results. What you'll bring General * Track record leading small, high-autonomy engineering teams, ideally in developer productivity, CI/CD, platform, or infrastructure reliability, measured on system-level outcomes rather than feature delivery. * Deep comfort with CI/CD and build systems. You understand why pipelines flake, why they're slow, and what actually moves success-rate and latency numbers versus what just feels like progress. * Demonstrated root-cause instinct and a bar for talent over headcount: you'd rather run understaffed than fill a seat with someone good-enough. * Comfort operating under metrics-driven accountability, including publicly baselining a number and reporting honestly against it. * Strong executive-level communication. This pilot has direct visibility to engineering leadership. Nice to have * Experience with agentic or AI-assisted development workflows, and a view on where human/agent friction shows up differently than pure human friction. * Prior experience running a defined-window pilot or 0 to 1 initiative with explicit success criteria. * Familiarity with GitLab's own CI/CD internals, or equivalent depth on another large-scale build/test system. 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 $190,000—$245,000 USD 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.

ABOUT THE ROLE AI Teammates are agents that work like actual team members in Asana — they triage bugs, respond to requests, draft project briefs, conduct research, and handle complex knowledge work across workflows. Unlike chatbots, Teammates are shared team resources that build memory and context across all executions, getting smarter as your team works with them. Currently live with Fortune 500 customers, AI Teammates represent Asana's shift from tracking work to getting work done. We're looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the AI Teammates Platform team — the core engineering team responsible for the execution engine and capability layer that powers AI Teammates. You'll manage a senior team of approximately eight engineers (ICs up to L6) building the systems that determine how AI Teammates reason, execute, and improve over time — from model integration and rollout, to proactive agent behavior, to the developer platform that enables other Asana teams to build on top of AI Teammates. This is a rare opportunity to be at the forefront of Agentic AI. You'll work directly with model partners, lead the core team behind a new applied AI product introduction, and help define how AI agents collaborate with humans in a work management platform used by millions of teams worldwide. This role is based in our San Francisco office with an office-centric hybrid schedule. The standard in-office days are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Most Asanas have the option to work from home on Wednesdays. Working from home on Fridays depends on the type of work you do and the teams with which you partner. If you're interviewing for this role, your recruiter will share more about the in-office requirements. ABOUT ASANA AI Asana AI is the company's number one priority. We're building the future of human/AI collaboration — going beyond chatbots to integrate AI into everyday workflows for some of the biggest companies on the planet. Asana's AI Teammates deliver a secure, multi-player, enterprise-grade agentic experience. They're transforming Asana from a place where work is tracked to a place where work gets done. Our AI teams move quickly, with a track record of successful launches, and we're just getting started. ABOUT THE TEAM AI Teammates Platform owns the execution engine and capability layer that powers Asana's AI agents — the core systems that determine how Teammates reason, execute, and improve over time. The team's ownership spans model upgrades (evaluating, integrating, and rolling out new LLMs), proactive and autonomous agent behavior, platform and developer experience for Asana's broader engineering organization, and quality and evaluation infrastructure. Peer teams — Agent Orchestration and AI Chat — build on the platform, while the Teammates Experience team owns the user-facing layer. We're a senior team, fast-moving, and working on some of the hardest applied AI problems in enterprise software. This role is based in our San Francisco office with an office-centric hybrid schedule. The standard in-office days are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Most Asanas have the option to work from home on Wednesdays. Working from home on Fridays depends on the type of work you do and the teams with which you partner. If you're interviewing for this role, your recruiter will share more about the in-office requirements. WHAT YOU’LL ACHIEVE * Lead and grow the AI Teammates Platform team of ~8 senior engineers, setting technical direction and driving execution on core AI agent capabilities. * Own the technical vision for the execution engine, including model integration, proactive agent behavior, and evaluation infrastructure. * Drive the team’s model upgrade pipeline by evaluating new LLMs and balancing execution quality against latency and cost. * Build and maintain the platform that enables other Asana engineering teams to build AI-powered features on top of AI Teammates. * Partner with Product, Design, and Data Science to define and execute roadmap priorities that support Asana’s top company priority. * Collaborate with peer teams like Agent Orchestration and AI Chat on shared infrastructure, APIs, and cross-team initiatives. * Drive team delivery pace and improve engineering velocity while championing the adoption of AI coding tools. * Attract, retain, and develop exceptional senior engineering talent in a highly competitive market. ABOUT YOU * 7+ years of experience in software engineering, including 4+ years managing technical teams. * Applied AI experience is essential, including at least one year of hands-on experience building products on top of large language models. * Demonstrates curiosity about AI tools and emerging technologies, with a willingness to learn and leverage them to enhance productivity, collaboration, or decision-making. * Strong technical foundation with the ability to guide architectural decisions in a fast-moving, ambiguous AI product space. * Experience building and scaling platform teams that serve multiple product surfaces and internal engineering consumers. * Comfortable with ambiguity and thriving in "zero-to-one" product environments to drive clarity from complexity. * Effective cross-functional collaborator who builds strong partnerships across Engineering, Product, and Data Science. * Track record of driving engineering velocity improvements and adopting developer productivity tooling. At Asana, we're committed to building teams that include a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills, as this is critical to helping us achieve our mission. If you're interested in this role and don't meet every listed requirement, we still encourage you to apply. WHAT WE’LL OFFER Our comprehensive compensation package plays a big part in how we recognize you for the impact you have on our path to achieving our mission. We believe that compensation should be reflective of the value you create relative to the market value of your role. To ensure pay is fair and not impacted by biases, we're committed to looking at market value which is why we check ourselves and conduct a yearly pay equity audit. For this role, the estimated base salary range is between $264,000 - $300,000. The actual base salary will vary based on various factors, including market and individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process. The listed range above is a guideline, and the base salary range for this role may be modified. In addition to base salary, your compensation package may include additional components such as equity, sales incentive pay (for most sales roles), and benefits. If you're interviewing for this role, speak with your recruiter to learn more about the total compensation and benefits for this role. We strive to provide equitable and competitive benefits packages that support our employees worldwide and include: * Mental health, wellness & fitness benefits * Career coaching & support * Inclusive family building benefits * Long-term savings or retirement plans * In-office culinary options to cater to your dietary preferences These are just some of the benefits we offer, and benefits may vary based on role, country, and local regulations. If you're interviewing for this role, speak with your Talent Acquisition Partner to learn more about the total compensation and benefits for this role. #LI-Hybrid About us Asana is a leading platform for human + AI collaboration. Millions of teams around the world rely on Asana to achieve their most important goals, faster. Asana has been named to Fortune's Best Workplaces for 7+ years and recognized by Fast Company, Forbes, and Gartner for excellence in workplace culture and innovation. We offer an exceptional office-centric culture while adopting the best elements of hybrid models to ensure that every one of our global team members can work together effortlessly. With 13+ offices all over the world, we are always looking for individuals who care about building technology that drives positive change in the world and a culture where everyone feels that they belong. Join Asana’s Talent Network to stay up to date on job opportunities and life at Asana.