Technical Chief of Staff to the CTO

An overview of this role

As the Technical Chief of Staff to the CTO, you'll scale the impact of GitLab's engineering leadership by closing the gap between technical vision and day-to-day execution. You'll partner closely with the CTO, executive leadership team, and senior engineers to align a multi-year technical vision with product strategy. You'll translate decisions into clear operating mechanisms and make sure they're documented in GitLab's Handbook to support our all-remote, asynchronous culture. You'll lead initiatives such as AI transformation and internal GitLab AI and large language model (LLM) feature testing. You'll define and implement unified metric frameworks to improve R&D quality and efficiency. You'll orchestrate the rhythm of business for the engineering organization, including staff meetings, quarterly business reviews, and offsites. In your first year, you'll be expected to establish trusted proxy relationships on behalf of the CTO, drive measurable improvements in engineering velocity and organizational health, and act as a key liaison for high-stakes moments, including board materials, M&A technical diligence, and major security or infrastructure incidents.

Some examples of our projects:

• Partner with the PMO organization to eliminate friction, ensuring they can achieve the business outcomes of strategic programs such as Customer Zero.
• Work with the architecture team and ELT to define a "North Star" that aligns with the product vision and connects directly to individual teams.

What you'll do

• Lead the execution of the CTO's 3-year technical vision by aligning engineering and product strategy with clear priorities and accountable owners.
• Drive the technical narrative and content for board materials, investor decks, and keynotes while owning competitive and market intelligence, including technical due diligence for potential acquisitions, to inform executive decisions and external storytelling.
• Guard and evolve the CTO's operating model by documenting decisions and processes in the GitLab Handbook and orchestrating the rhythm of business (staff meetings, quarterly business reviews, and offsites) to drive clear decisions, follow-through, and fewer unnecessary meetings.
• Lead GitLab's internal AI transformation as "Customer Zero," ensuring engineering teams adopt and rigorously test GitLab's AI and LLM capabilities and provide actionable feedback to Product.
• Implement and maintain standardized R&D metric frameworks such as DORA and SPACE to track and improve engineering quality, velocity, and efficiency.
• Partner with Finance, the executive leadership team, and the F