Director, Customer Support Systems

An overview of this role

As the Director, Customer Support Systems, you will lead the technology strategy that supports GitLab's global post-sales organization. In this role, you will take ownership of the systems that power Customer Success, Support, and Community workflows, with a strong focus on the Zendesk platform and the broader support technology ecosystem. Reporting to the Vice President of Business Systems, you will help shape a reliable, scalable foundation for how GitLab serves customers after the sale.

You will work closely with leaders across Customer Support, Customer Success, and Community to design a more connected post-sales systems landscape. This includes improving case routing, strengthening self-service experiences, and connecting support data with platforms such as Gainsight and Salesforce so teams have a clearer view of customer health and operational performance. You will also guide a distributed team of engineers and architects as they move the support technology stack from reactive maintenance to more proactive, data-informed improvement.

In your first year, you will help define a clear roadmap for post-sales systems, improve platform governance, and support stable release practices for systems that serve always-on support operations. This is a high-impact opportunity to improve how GitLab teams work together across the customer lifecycle and to build systems that support retention, expansion, and a better customer experience.

What you'll do

• Lead the strategy, architecture, and execution for the technology ecosystem that supports GitLab's global Customer Success, Support, and Community functions.
• Define and deliver a multi-year roadmap for post-sales systems that aligns with business goals and is measured through retention, expansion, and customer experience outcomes.
• Take operational ownership of the global Zendesk environment, ensuring high availability, strong case routing, and effective integration with customer relationship management and internal engineering workflows.
• Partner directly with post-sales leaders to improve support technology, moving from a reactive ticket management approach to a more proactive model focused on self-service, case deflection, and faster resolution.
• Design scalable processes across the customer lifecycle, including onboarding, customer health, case management, renewals, and related post-sales workflows.
• Drive the adoption of artificial intelligence and automation capabilities to improve efficiency, triage, routing, operational productivity, and risk identification.
• Work with Data and Business Intelligence teams to improve data integrity and support a reliable source of truth for health scores, product usage reporting, and retention insights.
• Mentor and grow a distributed team of business systems professionals, building a culture of ownership, collaboration, documentation, and continuous improvement.

What you'll bring

• Significant experience in Enterprise Applications or Business Systems, including strong leadership experience in a high-growth business-to-business software environment.
• Strong knowledge of post-sales business processes, including customer success, support, renewals, and the broader customer lifecycle, with a clear understanding of how systems influence retention and churn outcomes.
• Proven experience owning or leading major customer-facing platforms such as Zendesk, Service Cloud, or Gainsight, including platform configuration, optimization, and governance.
• Experience designing integrations between customer success tools and core business platforms such as Salesforce, finance systems, and data platforms.
• Ability to work effectively across technical and business teams, influence senior stakeholders, and translate strategic goals into practical system improvements.
• Strong analytical skills and comfort working with data models, health scoring frameworks, dashboards, and operational reporting used to guide customer decisions.
• Demonstrated success leading and developing globally distributed teams of analysts, administrators, developers, or architects in an all-remote and asynchronous environment.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

The Customer Success IT team builds and supports the systems that help GitLab's post-sales teams serve customers effectively at scale.

We work across business systems, process design, integrations, and data to improve how Customer Success, Support, and Community teams operate throughout the customer journey. Our work helps connect customer signals, reduce friction in day-to-day operations, and make it easier for internal teams to act on reliable information.

This team sits at the intersection of technology and business impact. Team members partner closely with post-sales leaders and technical teams to solve complex operational challenges, improve visibility into customer outcomes, and support a more connected experience across tools and workflows. Because GitLab works in an all-remote environment, the team values clear communication, strong documentation, thoughtful ownership, and collaboration across time zones. If you enjoy solving systems problems that have a direct impact on customer retention and long-term success, you'll find meaningful work here.