VP of Product Security

An overview of this role

As Vice President of Product Security, you will define how security is built into GitLab's AI-powered DevSecOps platform and the products and services that support it. Reporting to the Chief Information Security Officer, you will lead GitLab's Product Security organization with end-to-end responsibility for product and service security, with a primary focus on secure product design and delivery and a secondary focus on the infrastructure and cloud systems behind it. 

This is, first and foremost, a product engineering leadership role. We are looking for someone who has built and shipped product at a high-growth AI or SaaS company—someone who understands the speed at which product teams move, the tradeoffs inherent in shipping features at scale, and how to make security a native property of the product rather than a layer applied on top. The most successful candidates will have owned product architecture, developer experience, and security outcomes as a product engineering leader. Infrastructure and cloud security matter here, but they are in service of the product—not the other way around. 

In this role, you help make security a native property of the product, partner closely with senior leaders across Engineering, Product, AI, and Security, and shape outcomes such as stronger security architecture, scalable security services, and predictable security processes that support fast product delivery.

Some examples of our projects:

• Building core security platform capabilities such as authentication and authorization services, secrets management, permission models, and audit instrumentation
• Defining security strategy for AI-powered features and agentic platform capabilities, including prompt injection defenses, model and data protections, and governance for AI features

What you’ll do

• Set the long-term strategy and operating model for Product Security across GitLab.com, GitLab Dedicated, and self-managed offerings
• Lead a global, multi-disciplinary organization spanning:
• Application Security
• Product Security Engineering / security tooling
• Security Architecture and Platforms
• Vulnerability Management
• Product Security Incident Response (PSIRT)
• Infrastructure, Cloud, and Data Security
• Partner with the Chief Technology Officer, Chief Product Officer, Chief Information Security Officer, Vice President of AI Engineering, and other R&D leaders to embed security into product architecture, planning, and delivery
• Own the roadmap for core security services and developer-facing platform capabilities, including authentication, authorization, secrets management, auditability, and security APIs
• Drive secure design reviews, threat modeling, and risk-based security practices that help product teams ship securely without adding unnecessary friction
• Guide GitLab's approach to AI and agentic security, including security architecture, governance decisions, and risk acceptance for new AI surfaces
• Oversee vulnerability management, product security incident response, and bug bounty operations, using trends and root-cause analysis to inform durable product and process improvements
• Establish clear security metrics, planning inputs, and risk visibility that support executive decision-making, customer conversations, and engineering prioritization

What you’ll bring

• Experience operating as a senior engineering or security leader with strong product engineering credibility and ownership of security-relevant product architecture
• Experience building, shipping, and operating services in a high-growth SaaS or AI environment, with a clear understanding of how fast-moving product teams work
• Ability to lead multi-disciplinary organizations through Directors, Senior Managers, and senior individual contributors in a distributed, remote-first setting
• Knowledge of secure design, threat modeling, web application and API security, and modern authentication and authorization patterns
• Familiarity with software supply chain security, continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines, vulnerability management, incident response, and cloud security concepts
• Experience partnering closely with Product, Engineering, AI, and Security leaders to turn risk, customer needs, and technical trade-offs into practical roadmaps and decisions
• Skill in written and verbal communication, including presenting technical risk and business trade-offs clearly to executives, customers, and other stakeholders
• Openness to candidates with different career paths, including product engineering leaders with deep security ownership or security leaders with a strong record of building and shipping products
• Nice-to-have: Experience with developer tools, DevOps/DevSecOps platforms, large-scale open-source projects, security standards and frameworks (OWASP, NIST, SLSA), bug bounty and coordinated disclosure programs, or regulated/security-sensitive customer environments (financial services, government, healthcare).

About the team

The Product Security Department sits within GitLab's Security Division, reporting through the CISO. GitLab's security organization is structured to keep security close to the product, not siloed from it. Product Security teams are embedded alongside product and engineering counterparts, work in the open, and contribute directly to the GitLab codebase. We dogfood aggressively, iterate quickly, and believe that transparency is a security advantage, not a liability.

We are building the kind of security organization that engineers want to work with — one that accelerates shipping rather than blocking it, and that treats the platform we protect as the product we're most proud of.