Staff Backend Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security – Secrets Management at GitLab

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.

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.

Staff Backend Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security – Secrets Management