Senior Engineering Manager Design Systems

Senior Engineering Manager, Design Systems at GitLab

GitLab is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead a foundational team within the Upstream Studios organization. This role is pivotal in managing the Pajamas Design System and docs.gitlab.com, impacting the coherence and usability of the entire GitLab product and serving millions of users. This is a unique opportunity to define engineering leadership within a design-focused group, reporting to the Chief Design Officer and collaborating across multiple departments.

About the Role

As the first Engineering Manager embedded in Upstream Studios, you will lead a dedicated team focused on the Pajamas Design System and the docs.gitlab.com platform. You will have significant influence in shaping the engineering practice within this new function. Your responsibilities will include guiding architectural decisions, refining contribution workflows, and empowering a high-impact team to perform leveraged work. You will foster cross-functional partnerships, particularly with Product Design and Technical Writing, to translate design and content requirements into scalable technical solutions. A key aspect of this role is advocating for engineering quality, addressing technical debt, accessibility, security, and platform reliability.

What You'll Do

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of engineers working on the Pajamas Design System and GitLab documentation site.
• Define and build the engineering practice within Upstream Studios, influencing its future shape.
• Guide architecture and technical decisions for the design system (components, tokens, patterns) and the docs site (performance, reliability, infrastructure, localization).
• Educate stakeholders across the organization on the strategic value of a well-maintained design system and documentation platform.
• Advocate for engineering quality, including technical debt, accessibility standards, customer issues, security, and platform reliability.
• Collaborate with Product Design and Technical Writing to translate design and content needs into scalable technical solutions.

What You'll Bring

• Experience leading infrastructure, platform, or development teams, with a proven record of building high-performing, values-aligned teams.
• Deep expertise in design systems, including design tokens, component architecture, accessibility standards, and contribution models.
• Excellent technical background with professional experience in Git, docs-as-code, Hugo, accessibility, and design system development.
• Experience building and supporting multi-lingual sites and localization workflows at scale.
• Professional experience with JavaScript (Vue.js) and familiarity with Elasticsearch, Ruby/Go, AI tools, and CI/CD practices.
• Strong expertise in running and scaling large, consumer-grade platforms, focusing on reliability, security, performance, and scalability.
• Proficiency in English, written and verbal, for effective remote and asynchronous communication.
• Demonstrated ability to clearly communicate complex technical, architectural, and organizational challenges and propose iterative solutions.
• Experience with performance and optimization problems, with the ability to diagnose and prevent them.
• Comfort working in a highly agile, iterative software development process.
• Passion for open source and developer tools, with a commitment to GitLab's values, inclusive culture, and high-performance expectations.

About The Team

Upstream Studios is GitLab's full-stack experience organization, responsible for the entire product lifecycle from ideation to deployment. They integrate research, design, frontend engineering, documentation, and brand into a unified pipeline, shaping the customer experience.

Key skills/competency

• Engineering Management
• Design Systems
• Pajamas Design System
• Technical Leadership
• Product Development
• Accessibility
• JavaScript (Vue.js)
• CI/CD
• Platform Engineering
• Open Source