Principal Database Engineer, Data Engineering & Monetization

GitLab is an open-core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating human progress. Our platform unites teams and organizations, breaking down barriers and redefining what's possible in software development. Thanks to products like Duo Enterprise and Duo Agent Platform, customers get AI benefits at every stage of the SDLC. 

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.

An overview of this role

GitLab is building the future of DevOps at unprecedented scale. As our Principal Database Engineer, you'll architect the data platform foundation that powers both GitLab.com and thousands of enterprise deployments worldwide. This is an opportunity to design and build industry-leading database systems that enable GitLab's next phase of growth. You'll transform how we approach data reliability, scale our platform to support exponential growth, and establish patterns that become the gold standard for database development and operations. Working with our exceptional engineering talent, you'll have everything needed to create lasting impact.

In this role, you'll architect scalable, distributed solutions that transform how we manage and leverage data across our SaaS and self-managed deployments, supporting enterprise-scale growth. Combining deep technical expertise with strategic influence—you'll build proactive database health frameworks, drive adoption of modern database technologies and data stores, and create solutions that prevent incidents before they impact customers. Working at the intersection of product and infrastructure, you'll shape GitLab's data foundation while enabling engineering teams to succeed through self-service tools, best practices, and automated reliability.

What You’ll Do  

• Lead database architecture and strategy for GitLab.com's PostgreSQL infrastructure, designing scalable solutions that support hundreds of thousands of concurrent users while ensuring reliability, performance, and long-term growth planning
• Build proactive database health and reliability frameworks that prevent incidents and customer escalations through continuous monitoring, automated remediation, and predictive analytics that surface issues before they impact users
• Drive database excellence across engineering teams by establishing best practices, providing expert guidance on migrations and query optimization, and building self-service tools and guardrails that enable teams to succeed while maintaining database health
• Own end-to-end observability and operational excellence by designing symptom-based monitoring systems, leading incident mitigation efforts, and transforming learnings into automated, repeatable processes that eliminate recurring issues
• Shape GitLab's database platform evolution by evaluating and implementing modern database technologies and data stores, influencing organizational adoption through evidence-based recommendations and hands-on solutions that improve both product capabilities and production stability
• Bring a multi-platform mindset by designing and evaluating solutions that will help scale both GitLab.com and be manageable for our self managed customers. 
• Build partnerships between product and infrastructure teams to ensure that product and team decisions align with the infrastructure team’s priorities.
• Break down long-term goals into incremental, actionable steps that deliver customer value
• Spend time in the codebase to maintain technical credibility and team empathy
• Ship working solutions to customers over creating presentations or theoretical designs
• Provide strategic context and