Principal Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security

An overview of this role

As the Principal Engineer, Software Supply Chain Security, you’ll own the technical strategy that secures how software is built and delivered on GitLab’s DevSecOps platform. You’ll provide architectural leadership across multiple engineering teams. You’ll also partner closely with infrastructure and CI/CD teams to harden our pipelines, infrastructure, and access layers. Your work will shape GitLab’s enterprise security posture in the rapidly growing software supply chain security market. You’ll focus on SLSA Level 3 compliance, secrets management, CI/CD security hardening, and the foundations of GitLab’s global zero trust architecture. You’ll mentor Staff Engineers and individual contributors, and you’ll guide critical technical decisions. You’ll also act as a spokesperson with customers and external stakeholders for GitLab’s secure, mission-critical SaaS that runs millions of pipelines.

Some examples of our projects:

• SLSA Level 3 compliance and provenance attestation across GitLab’s CI/CD platform
• Integrated secrets management and runner security for container-isolated, secure pipelines

What you’ll do

• Lead the end-to-end software supply chain security architecture for GitLab’s CI/CD platform, including SLSA Level 3 implementation and CI infrastructure hardening.
• Drive cross-team technical strategy and decisions across our Software Supply Chain Security (SSCS) stage teams, aligning engineering work to SSCS strategic plans.
• Collaborate with infrastructure and CI/CD teams to design and land long-term initiatives for secure, scalable runner architecture, container isolation, and pipeline security at scale.
• Propose and validate technical implementations that support architectural changes to improve CI/CD scaling and performance on critical paths.
• Teach, mentor, and coach Staff Engineers and individual contributors, raising the bar on supply chain threat modeling, secrets management, artifact signing, and SBOM lifecycle practices.
• Partner with Engineering Managers and senior leadership to define roadmaps, break down complex initiatives, and enable Staff Engineers to lead sub-department-wide efforts.
• Engage with customers and external stakeholders as a technical consultant and spokesperson for GitLab’s software supply chain security capabilities and roadmap.
• Collaborate with product, security, and compliance stakeholders to ensure features meet enterprise security, governance, and regulatory expectations in the software supply chain security market.

What you’ll bring

• Deep expertise in software supply chain security, including threat modeling for supply chain attack vectors, SLSA implementation and attestation systems, and SBOM generation and lifecycle management.
• Strong knowledge of artifact signing and verification using the Sigstore ecosystem, including Cosign, Fulcio, Rekor, and in-toto attestations.
• Experience designing and hardening CI/CD security, such as runner isolation, pipeline security controls, and secrets management in large-scale environments.
• Background in distributed systems and infrastructure, including building resilient CI/CD platforms that process high pipeline volumes and optimizing performance for critical paths.
• Practical experience with container security and Kubernetes security, including admission controllers, policy controllers, workload isolation, and registry hardening.
• Proficiency in Go or Rust in a production environment, combined with expert-level understanding of CI/CD workflows and DevSecOps best practices.
• Experience operating as a Principal or Staff Engineer across multiple development teams, providing architectural leadership and partnering with Engineering Managers and senior leaders.
• Demonstrated capacity to clearly communicate complex problems and solutions.

About the team

Our Software Supply Chain Security stage engineering teams are responsible for authentication and access within GitLab. We also build features that help customers manage vulnerabilities, dependencies, security policies, and compliance frameworks across their organizations. Our group includes four core teams (Authentication, Authorization, Pipeline Security, and Compliance) and more than 40 engineers. We work asynchronously across regions and partner closely with product, security, and infrastructure to deliver secure-by-default features for customers in highly regulated industries.