Engineering Manager - Database Change Management

About this role

<div class="content-intro"><p>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.</p> <p>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&nbsp;and continuous knowledge exchange, enabling our team members to reach their full potential while collaborating with industry leaders to solve complex problems. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuZIb5zszQI">Co-create the future with us</a> as we build technology that transforms how the world develops software.</p> <p>*<em>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.</em></p></div><h2><strong>Engineering Manager - Database Change Management<br></strong>An overview of this role</h2> <p>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.</p> <p><strong><strong class="textBold">Some examples of our projects:</strong></strong></p> <ul> <li value="1">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</li> <li value="2">Improving database health monitoring, cloud-managed database observability, and saturation and capacity forecasting for GitLab.com and self-managed deployments</li> </ul> <h2>What you’ll do</h2> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Lead</strong></strong> a distributed team of backend engineers working fully asynchronously across time zones.</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Hire, onboard, and develop</strong></strong> an India-based engineering cluster, including intermediate engineers and a senior technical anchor.</li> <li value="3"><strong><strong class="textBold">Balance</strong></strong> the team's database health responsibilities with the multi-quarter migration system replacement so both missions continue to make progress.</li> <li value="4"><strong><strong class="textBold">Protect</strong></strong> the replatforming program's critical path by limiting production interruptions for engineers focused on it while meeting the team's operational commitments.</li> <li value="5"><strong><strong class="textBold">Coach</strong></strong> engineers from intermediate through senior levels, supporting their growth, ownership, and impact.</li> <li value="6"><strong><strong class="textBold">Run</strong></strong> the team async-first through written decision records, visible priorities, and management practices that work when team members share few or no working hours.</li> <li value="7"><strong><strong class="textBold">Partner</strong></strong> with Distribution, Quality Assurance (QA), database framework teams, Database Architecture, Database Automation, and infrastructure leadership.</li> <li value="8"><strong><strong class="textBold">Represent</strong></strong> the team's capacity, priorities, risks, and delivery status to senior engineering leadership.</li> </ul> <h2>What you’ll bring</h2> <ul> <li value="1"><strong><strong class="textBold">Engineering management experience</strong></strong> leading remote, distributed teams across many time zones, including team members with little or no overlap with your working day.</li> <li value="2"><strong><strong class="textBold">Production PostgreSQL experience</strong></strong>, including capacity planning and enough technical depth to contribute credibly to migration system and reliability design discussions without needing to own the designs.</li> <li value="3"><strong><strong class="textBold">Experience leading</strong></strong> a long-horizon platform or infrastructure program alongside operational responsibilities and keeping both on track.</li> <li value="4"><strong><strong class="textBold">Hiring and team-building experience</strong></strong>, including experience standing up a new team or site cluster, or closely related work.</li> <li value="5"><strong><strong class="textBold">Strong written communication skills</strong></strong> and experience using writing as a primary management tool.</li> <li value="6"><strong><strong class="textBold">Experience coaching and developing</strong></strong> backend engineers across multiple levels.</li> <li value="7"><strong><strong class="textBold">Ability to set priorities and protect focus</strong></strong> while maintaining production health and meeting operational commitments.</li> <li value="8"><strong><strong class="textBold">Experi