Engineering Manager, AST: Composition Analysis

An overview of this role

As an Engineering Manager for Composition Analysis, you'll lead a team building the software composition analysis capabilities that help GitLab customers find and fix vulnerabilities in their application dependencies and software supply chain. You'll guide engineers working on software composition analysis and container scanning, and you'll be responsible for setting priorities, shaping product architecture, and running agile processes so that our security offerings stay effective, reliable, and easy to use in real DevSecOps environments.

You'll balance complex, security-focused roadmaps and author project plans so that customers get a robust composition analysis experience within GitLab. In your first year, you'll drive key initiatives like auto-remediation of vulnerable packages and auto-fix breaking changes with AI, scanning unmanaged C/C++ dependencies, static reachability analysis, and snippet detection for open source dependencies.

Some examples of our projects:

• Building hyper-scale vulnerability detection engines for millions of GitLab users around the world
• Designing auto-remediation workflows for vulnerable open source and third-party dependencies
• Auto AI fixes for breaking changes that happen following dependency bumps

What you’ll do

• Lead engineers across the Composition Analysis team, setting clear priorities and expectations.
• Drive key security initiatives, including auto-remediation of vulnerable software packages, scanning unmanaged C/C++ dependencies, static reachability analysis, and snippet detection for open source dependencies.
• Balance priorities and resources across the Composition Analysis team to ensure sustainable delivery and high-quality outcomes.
• Author and maintain project plans for epics within the Composition Analysis team, aligning work, identifying dependencies, and ensuring quality delivery.
• Run agile project management processes for the Composition Analysis team, including planning, estimation, and continuous improvement of delivery practices.
• Provide guidance on the architecture of software composition analysis solutions, ensuring they are robust, scalable, and effective.
• Collaborate closely with the Composition Analysis team to ensure consistent, high-quality approaches to application security across GitLab's platform.

What you’ll bring

• Background leading multiple technical teams or groups, ideally in application security or cloud security
• Practical understanding of software composition analysis, including how to assess and manage risks in application dependencies
• Familiarity with containerization technologies, package managers, and dependency management systems
• Experience working with or around open source security tooling (for example, Syft, Grype, Trivy, or similar tools)
• Ability to plan and run agile project management processes for the Composition Analysis team, including coordinating priorities and dependencies.
• Skill in guiding product and architecture decisions for security scanning tools, balancing technical constraints with customer needs
• Openness to candidates with transferable experience in security engineering, DevSecOps, or vulnerability management who are motivated to grow in application security leadership

About the team

The Composition Analysis team at GitLab sits within our security product area and focuses on building and improving our software composition analysis capabilities across the DevSecOps platform. We own core features such as software composition analysis, container scanning, and related remediation workflows. You'll lead our distributed group of security-focused engineers as we collaborate asynchronously across time zones using GitLab itself for planning, code review, and delivery. Right now, we're focused on advancing capabilities like auto-remediation of vulnerable packages, scanning unmanaged C/C++ dependencies, static reachability analysis at the function level, and snippet detection for open source dependencies.