Staff Backend Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security: Secrets Management

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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 security module (HSM) or PKCS#11 integrations.

• Experience implementing authentication and authorization integrations, such as JSON Web Token (JWT) or OpenID Connect (OIDC), mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS), and certificate-based authentication.

• Proficiency building product integrations in Go (within the OpenBao or Vault ecosystem) and Ruby on Rails for GitLab platform integration.

• Experience contributing to open source projects and working effectively with distributed governance, balancing upstream needs with product requirements.

• Demonstrated ability to operate with high autonomy, drive strategy, and serve as a trusted partner to senior leaders (including constructively challenging assumptions and tradeoffs).

• Strong communication and collaboration skills to influence across teams and levels, including mentoring engineers and working in a fully remote, asynchronous environment.

About the team

The Secrets Management team sits within the Pipeline Security group in GitLab's Software Supply Chain Security stage. We own GitLab Secrets Manager, an OpenBao-powered capability that helps teams securely store, distribute, and manage the lifecycle of secrets used across continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. The team works closely with Authentication, Authorization, Compliance, and Platform counterparts to deliver secure defaults, reliable operations for GitLab.com, and product-grade integration between GitLab and OpenBao (including namespaces, authentication, and policy management). Our core challenge is building multi-tenant secrets management at scale while balancing upstream open source collaboration with the needs of GitLab customers.

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
$131,600—$282,000 USD

How GitLab will support you

• 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

• Home office support

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.

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