Engineering Manager, AI Engineering: Chat

An overview of this role

The Engineering Manager on the Duo Chat team helps shape the core AI capabilities behind GitLab Duo Chat, so customers can work faster and more securely across the GitLab DevSecOps platform. In this role, you will manage a team of engineers building AI-powered product experiences that span the software development lifecycle, while staying close to the technical work that informs strong engineering judgment. You will play a key role in how the team delivers scalable, reliable, and high-quality AI features, from roadmap execution to stronger testing, performance, and developer clarity.

Some examples of our projects:

• Extend capabilities of the Duo Agent Platform agentic chat regarding agentic capabilities, UI and context management
• Integrate new agentic generative AI models and providers into GitLab Duo Chat to expand capabilities and improve answer quality
• Improve debugging, observability, and test coverage for AI-powered chat workflows to maintain reliability at scale

What you’ll do

• Manage a team of experienced frontend, backend, and AI engineers to deliver GitLab Duo Chat roadmap commitments across the DevSecOps lifecycle.
• Partner with product and UX teams to define requirements and deliver AI features that address customer needs and improve answer quality.
• Participate in technical architecture and development work for systems that run AI agents at scale, with a focus on reliability, performance, and maintainability.
• Guide day-to-day execution by setting clear direction, tracking progress against milestones, and removing blockers to keep delivery on schedule.
• Coach engineers through feedback, guidance, and development conversations that foster each engineer's growth and overall team performance.
• Promote a team culture grounded in curiosity, inclusion, accountability, and steady delivery against team goals.
• Improve quality, testing, and performance practices that increase coverage, strengthen observability, and keep AI-powered chat workflows reliable in production.

What you’ll bring

• Experience managing engineering teams in a distributed environment and enabling strong team execution.
• Strong software engineering foundation with the ability to contribute to technical discussions and evaluate engineering tradeoffs.
• Hands-on familiarity with agentic AI or generative AI applied to software development workflows.
• Ability to work effectively through ambiguity, changing requirements, and fast-moving product development.
• Clear communication and collaboration skills across engineering, product, design, and other stakeholders.
• Dedication to coaching engineers and creating an inclusive, constructive team environment.
• Comfort balancing people management with technical involvement in day-to-day development.
• Openness to transferable experience from different technical backgrounds if it aligns with managing AI-powered product teams.

About the team

We are part of GitLab's AI Engineering organization and own the AI-powered chat experience embedded across the GitLab platform. We include backend, frontend, and AI specialists who work asynchronously across time zones using issues, merge requests, and documentation as core collaboration tools. Our focus is to expand generative AI capabilities, improve the performance and reliability of chat workflows, and strengthen the debugging and testing foundations needed to enable AI features safely at scale. For more on how we work, see the Team Handbook Page.