Senior People Operations Partner

As the Senior People Compliance Partner, you'll own the employment compliance posture for People Operations across 65+ countries. You'll help GitLab scale with confidence by monitoring regulatory changes, leading People-related audits, and translating legal requirements into clear, workable processes and controls for non-legal teams. Reporting to the Senior Manager, People Operations, you'll partner closely with People Business Partners, Global Employment Management, Total Rewards, People Technology & Analytics, and Legal to reduce compliance risk while keeping our People practices consistent, documented, and audit-ready. In your first year, you'll establish reliable regulatory monitoring and communication, run end-to-end audit execution and responses (with strong documentation), strengthen People data privacy and retention practices across key systems, and coach a People Compliance Analyst through structured, repeatable workflows.

What you'll do

• Monitor employment law and regulatory changes across the countries where GitLab employs team members, and maintain a clear regulatory change log.
• Lead People compliance programs across the People Division, ensuring tracking, execution, and audit-ready documentation for key jurisdictions, including the United States and EMEA.
• Translate legal and regulatory requirements into practical system and process requirements, and use metrics to assess control effectiveness and reduce compliance risk.
• Advise People Operations leaders, the Global Employment Manager, and People Business Partners on compliance implications for team member lifecycle actions such as relocations, policy exceptions, entity changes, and terminations.
• Own People-related compliance audits and responses (including EEO-1, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and Affirmative Action, SOX people controls, and internal and external audits), managing timelines, data collection, and submissions.
• Partner with People Technology and Analytics to extract and report audit data, and keep compliance records organized and ready for review.
• Own People data privacy and retention practices, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, data processing agreements, cross-border transfer mechanisms, privacy impact assessments, data subject access requests, and retention schedules across systems such as Workday, ServiceNow, and Greenhouse.
• Document compliance workflows and procedures, and guide the People Compliance Analyst by delegating preparation work, reviewing output, and building their capability in areas like works council obligations.

What you'll bring

• Experience owning and improving global employment compliance programs across multiple countries and regions
• Working knowledge of employment regulations, with the ability to assess risk and apply requirements to People policies, processes, and decisions (including relocations, terminations, and entity changes)
• Experience managing People-related compliance audits, including planning timelines, coordinating data collection, and producing audit-ready documentation and records
• Working knowledge of data privacy for People data, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements, data retention practices, and partnering on incident response
• Ability to translate legal and regulatory requirements into clear, actionable process or system requirements, and to use metrics to monitor control effectiveness
• Experience partnering cross-functionally with Legal, People Business Partners, Total Rewards, and People Technology and Analytics to resolve complex compliance questions
• Strong documentation and knowledge-sharing habits, including building repeatable workflows, maintaining logs and knowledge base articles, and supporting others with country-specific guidance
• Ability to operate independently in a remote, asynchronous environment, including proactively identifying compliance risks and guiding a junior analyst through structured work and review

About the team

The Senior People Compliance Partner sits within People Operations and partners closely with Legal, People Business Partners, Total Rewards, and People Technology and Analytics to keep GitLab's People practices compliant as we support team members across 65+ countries. The team's work includes regulatory monitoring, audit readiness and responses (including EEO-1, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and Affirmative Action, and people-related Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) controls), and privacy and data retention practices across core People systems like Workday, ServiceNow, and Greenhouse. You'll collaborate asynchronously with stakeholders across regions to document clear, repeatable processes, manage risk before it becomes an incident, and build scalable compliance programs that can keep pace with changes in global employment and data privacy requirements.