Backend Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security: Secrets Management

Position: Staff Backend Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security: Secrets Management
Staff Backend Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security:
Secrets Management

Git Lab is the intelligent orchestration platform for Dev Sec Ops . Git Lab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation.

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. Git Lab 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.

An overview of this role
You’ll join Git Lab’s Software Supply Chain Security stage as the Staff Engineer, Secrets Management, providing technical leadership for Git Lab’s strategic investment in integrated secrets management. You’ll set the technical direction for Git Lab Secrets Manager, our Open Bao-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 Git Lab platform and the Open Bao open source project: you’ll drive architecture decisions for multi-tenant secrets management at scale, guide integration into Git Lab, 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 Git Lab Secrets Manager, reliable performance that meets  needs in partnership with Infrastructure teams, and strong cross-team alignment across Pipeline Security, Authentication, and Platform. You’ll also represent Git Lab in Open Bao’s governance and technical discussions, helping ensure our product direction and upstream contributions reinforce each other.

What you’ll do

Lead the technical strategy for Git Lab Secrets Manager, setting architecture direction for secure, multi-tenant secrets management at scale.

Own the integration between Git Lab and Open Bao, including name spaces, 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  Infrastructure teams to ensure secrets management meets reliability, performance, and operational requirements.

Represent Git Lab in the Open Bao 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 Git Lab’s secrets management capabilities and roadmap direction.

What you’ll bring

Experience designing and operating secrets management systems (for example, Hashi Corp Vault, Open Bao, 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 Open Bao or Vault ecosystem) and Ruby on Rails for Git Lab platform integration.

Experience contributing to…