Senior Partner Solutions Architect, Strategic Partnerships

An overview of this role

As a Senior Partner Solutions Architect, Strategic Partnerships, you'll own the technical strategy and validation of joint work with GitLab's strategic partners: hyperscalers, artificial intelligence (AI) labs, AI-native companies, and development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) vendors. You'll work with partners, Product, and Research and Development (R&D) to turn partner and customer needs into integrations, influence product design, and build the business case for each joint effort, from the first architecture review to a shipped integration. In this role you will also own the AI model evaluation process with our model partners, working closely with our R&D teams to assess new models ahead of release and ensure GitLab is built on the best-performing models for our customers. Unlike a customer-facing Solutions Architect role focused on adoption, you'll work with partners to make GitLab better. This role has no sales quota or variable pay.

At GitLab, our mission is simple: to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. Our platform doesn't just bring people together-it unites teams and organizations, breaking down barriers and redefining what's possible in software development.

What You’ll Do

• Own the end-to-end technical strategy for assigned strategic partners, connecting technical requirements with joint business objectives.
• Turn partner technology and roadmaps into integration, architecture, and product opportunities across the GitLab platform, from planning to monitoring and AI agents and model integrations.
• Resolve complex technical issues across GitLab and partner systems, including cloud architecture, tool integrations, and AI model and agent evaluation and integration. Build working prototypes to validate concepts with partners.
• Manage the end-to-end AI model evaluation process with our model partners, coordinating with R&D to secure early access, align on evaluation criteria and timelines, and translate results into partnership and product roadmap decisions.
• Design and facilitate partner workshops, architecture reviews, and cloud financial management (FinOps) sessions, bringing in the right participants and documenting outcomes and next steps.
• Build business cases for joint technical efforts, defining expected gains, costs, and resources, and securing agreement from partner managers, R&D, and leadership.
• Bring partner requirements and technical feedback into Product and R&D discussions to influence product design and the roadmap.
• Coordinate Engineering, Product, FinOps, Finance, Sales, and Marketing with partner technical teams to move joint work from evaluation to delivery.
• Track cloud, AI, and DevSecOps developments to advise partnership investment, and share reusable findings through documentation, the handbook, reference architectures, and technical content.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience as a Senior Solutions Architect, Partner Solutions Architect, Partner Engineer, or in a similar senior technical role. Experience with technology partners or alliances is strongly preferred.
• An end-to-end understanding of the software development lifecycle, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), and DevSecOps, with the ability to use GitLab in depth.
• Hands-on cloud architecture experience with at least one hyperscaler: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Microsoft Azure. Cloud cost or FinOps experience is a plus.
• Working knowledge of AI model evaluation frameworks and agent technology, including large language model (LLM) application programming interfaces (APIs), agent frameworks, and Model Context Protocol (MCP), and how they fit into developer workflows.
• Experience designing and facilitating technical workshops with senior technical and business stakeholders, and building business cases that scope work, estimate gains and costs, and size resources.
• An autonomous, ownership-driven approach: you identify work and move it forward without waiting for a project backlog.
• Clear, concise written and spoken communication, adapting technical and commercial trade-offs for audiences from engineers to executives.
• Ability to travel about once a quarter and work hours that overlap with Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). If you're on the US West Coast, expect to start around 7 a.m. Pacific Time; when the day ends is flexible.

About the team

You'll join Strategic Partnerships and report to the VP, Corporate Development and Strategic Partnerships. The team manages GitLab's relationships with hyperscalers, AI companies, and select DevSecOps companies, acting as the business owner and coordinating work across hosting contracts, product integrations, go-to-market activities, purchasing, and partner-specific marketing. Partner managers and directors lead each relationship; you'll own the technical side across partner types and collaborate with R&D, Engineering, FinOps, Finance, Sales, and Marketing. The role is remote, with Eastern Time preferred and other US time zones possible.

How GitLab will support you

• Benefits to support your health, finances, and well-being
• Flexible Paid Time Off 
• Team Member Resource Groups
• Equity Compensation & Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Growth and Development Fund
• Parental leave 
• Home office support

Please note that we welcome interest from candidates with varying levels of experience; many successful candidates do not meet every single requirement. Additionally, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every single qualification. If you're excited about this role, please apply and allow our recruiters to assess your application.