Staff Backend Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security: Secrets Management

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.

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An overview of this role

You'll join GitLab's Software Supply Chain Security stage as the Staff Engineer, Secrets Management, providing technical leadership for GitLab's strategic investment in integrated secrets management. You'll set the technical direction for GitLab Secrets Manager, our OpenBao-powered solution that helps customers securely store, distribute, and manage the lifecycle of secrets used across CI/CD pipelines. This role sits at the intersection of the GitLab platform and the OpenBao open source project: you'll drive architecture decisions for multi-tenant secrets management at scale, guide integration into GitLab, and contribute upstream so we can deliver capabilities customers can trust.

In your first year, your success will look like a clear, scalable architecture for GitLab Secrets Manager, reliable performance that meets GitLab.com needs in partnership with Infrastructure teams, and strong cross-team alignment across Pipeline Security, Authentication, and Platform. You'll also represent GitLab in OpenBao's governance and technical discussions, helping ensure our product direction and upstream contributions reinforce each other.

How we interview

Our process includes technical interviews and stakeholder conversations focused on how you partner across functions and drive alignment.

You should expect questions about how you collaborate with cross-functional partners and communicate tradeoffs in ambiguous, high-impact work.

What you'll do

• Lead the technical strategy for GitLab Secrets Manager, setting architecture direction for secure, multi-tenant secrets management at scale.
• Own the integration between GitLab and OpenBao, including namespaces, authentication mechanisms, and policy management.
• Collaborate with Pipeline Security, Authentication, and Platform teams to propose, review, and deliver cross-team secrets management improvements.
• Partner with GitLab.com Infrastructure teams to ensure secrets management meets reliability, performance, and operational requirements.
• Represent GitLab in the OpenBao open source project by contributing features upstream, participating in technical steering discussions, and maintaining strong technical credibility.
• Mentor and advise engineers on secrets management, cryptographic systems, and secure architecture patterns, raising the quality and consistency of designs and implementations.
• Interface with engineering managers and senior leadership to scope initiatives, clarify tradeoffs, and unblock delivery across teams.
• Engage with customers and external stakeholders to understand real-world needs and communicate GitLab's secrets management capabilities and roadmap direction.

What you'll bring

• Experience designing and operating secrets management systems (for example, HashiCorp Vault, OpenBao, or cloud-native offerings), including secure storage, access control, and audit logging.
• Ability to lead architecture decisions for resilient, multi-tenant services that handle secrets operations at scale, including high availability and cluster management patterns.
• Working knowledge of cryptographic and key management concepts, such as encryption in transit and at rest, key derivation, and hardware sec