Staff Enterprise Architect - GitLab

GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, trusted by more than 50 million registered users and over 50% of the Fortune 100 to ship better, more secure software faster.

We embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier, with all team members expected to incorporate AI into daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact.

An overview of this role

As a Staff Enterprise Architect, you will design and evolve how GitLab's internal systems are configured, integrate, perform, and scale to support a rapidly growing business. Reporting to the Director, Enterprise Architecture and AI Intelligent Automation, you will apply all four architecture lenses (business, application, data, and technology) while treating AI as a standing consideration within each.

You will lead through architecture, partnering with Applications engineering teams, Integration, RPA, and Intelligent Automation, and serving as a reviewer on the Architecture Review Board.

What you'll do

Business Architecture

• Map current-state processes and capabilities, tying each to supporting systems, owners, and systems of record to eliminate friction, manual handoffs, duplicated work, and remove inefficiencies an AI agent could handle.
• Architect end-to-end processes spanning front-office and back-office systems (new product introduction, CPQ, quote-to-cash, billing, revenue recognition, renewals, record-to-report, and customer service workflows).
• Redesign workflows before automating them, deciding what AI agents, deterministic automation, and humans should handle.

Application Architecture

• Serve as the embedded architect for Applications engineering teams, producing high-level designs and patterns for platforms like Salesforce, NetSuite, Zuora, and Zendesk.
• Favor configuration and supported extension patterns over customization, evaluating native AI before building bespoke solutions.
• Design for maintainability, observability, clear service ownership, and realistic total cost of ownership.
• Govern application change by reviewing significant build proposals, data model changes, and third-party packages, keeping platforms on supported versions.
• Run quarterly health checks on core platforms to measure customization footprint, API limits, automation headroom, and license consumption.

Data Architecture

• Architect data flows across operational and analytical planes, including RAG retrieval/grounding patterns for AI, API-first integrations, event-driven patterns, and reverse ETL pipelines.
• Design data access patterns meeting privacy, residency, and SOX requirements with field-level controls for sensitive data.
• Establish integration and data contracts between systems to protect downstream consumers.

Technology Architecture

• Define platform and integration patterns for iPaaS (Workato), identity management, secrets handling, and cloud services.
• Collaborate with Infrastructure and Security to design reliability, scale, authentication, authorization, and AI model governance frameworks.
• Monitor and optimize cloud and platform consumption, right-sizing capacity and managing license limits.

Across All Four Domains

• Produce target-state architectures, decision records, reference patterns, and high-level designs with complete data models and error-handling specs.
• Co-author designs with engineering teams and stay hands-on through build, resolving ambiguity and unblocking delivery.
• Build proofs of concept for complex technical problems and root-cause persistent production issues.
• Maintain a prioritized inventory of technical debt and drive remediation through funded projects.

What you'll bring

• Deep expertise in application and data architecture, with working fluency in business process and technology architecture.
• Strong hands-on background in integration, automation, and applied AI (RAG, tool calling, agent orchestration on platforms like Claude) with daily use of AI-assisted development.
• Experience architecting core business systems (ERP, CRM, CPQ, billing, financial, and customer service platforms) with SOX compliance discipline.
• Expert-level knowledge of data modeling, integration architecture patterns, and API design.
• Depth in iPaaS tooling (Workato) and production integration operations.
• Proven track record of driving architectural change through influence, async communication, and translating complex trade-offs into plain business language for leadership stakeholders.