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Field Strategist, Forward Deployed Engineering

Office of the Chief Customer Officer · GitLab

We’re building something new. If you’ve worked at the intersection of complex customer reality and product strategy, and you want to be in the room for the decisions that shape GitLab’s AI strategy, field priorities, and strategic direction, keep reading.

What We’re Building

We're building Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) in the Office of the Chief Customer Officer. This is a small, strategic team focused on the customer situations where GitLab's standard motions are not enough. The accounts where platform adoption, DAP readiness, and long-term customer value require deeper, more deliberate engagement.

The model is straightforward: work deeply in a limited number of strategic accounts, learn in real customer environments, and turn what works into reusable assets and clearer operating motions for the rest of the organization. FDE is not a service delivery team, and it is not a source of one-off custom solutions. The team exists to validate approaches in the field, codify what proves durable, and hand proven patterns to Customer Success, Professional Services, and other field teams so they can scale.

This role sits where product strategy, field signal, and executive judgment meet. You help shape where the team invests, what each engagement is intended to prove, and how what we learn in the field should influence Product, the broader CX organization, and FDE's own priorities. You also help translate product direction into guidance the field can use now, connect DAP learnings to CX Engineering's rollout and scale programs, and advise leadership on where GitLab should accelerate, adjust, or go deeper.

You'll work with customer executives and GitLab senior leadership, and you'll operate across Product, Engineering, CX, and the FDE team itself. This role has visibility at the top of the organization, helping shape product direction, field focus, and the strategic choices behind where the team goes deep.

What You'll Do

Shape The Strategic FDE Portfolio

• Partner with the FDE lead to define and evolve the portfolio of strategic accounts and initiatives where FDE involvement can drive meaningful adoption, validated learning, and reusable outcomes
• Build and maintain the portfolio criteria that guide where the team should invest, including platform and DAP adoption potential, strategic churn risk, signal value, willingness to co-develop, and the likelihood that an engagement will produce patterns that scale
• Lead a regular portfolio review cadence that helps the team stay focused on the highest-leverage work, reassess where deeper investment is warranted, and protect FDE from reactive or ad hoc pulls into lower-value engagements
• Write the engagement brief for each initiative: customer context, strategic hypothesis, what the team is there to validate, success measures, expected reusable output, and the path to handoff or scale

Design How Proven FDE Work Scales

• Partner with the FDE and GTM teams to ensure each engagement is sequenced against the adoption ladder, strengthening foundational platform adoption where needed and accelerating DAP adoption where the conditions are right
• Define the reusable outputs each engagement should produce, whether that is a reference architecture, adoption playbook, on-the-truck guide, content contribution, or another asset that can scale beyond a single account
• Turn field-proven approaches into repeatable motions by identifying what should be packaged for CS, PS, SA, or CX Engineering, and what should remain a deliberate strategic investment
• Shape the handoff path for what FDE proves in the field so mature patterns land cleanly with downstream teams and can scale without continued dependence on FDE

Shape DAP Signal And Field Direction

• Turn FDE customer work into structured input for Product, with a near-term focus on DAP adoption, readiness, deployment patterns, and blockers that should influence roadmap and prioritization
• Help determine how DAP strategy should shape field activity by clarifying what the organization can scale now, what FDE should continue to validate in the field, and what should be elevated as a product or platform gap
• Set priorities for strategic field assets by identifying which DAP learnings should become adoption frameworks, on-the-truck guidance, reference architectures, or inputs to CX Engineering's rollout and scale programs
• Advise FDE leadership and executive stakeholders on what the team's DAP field signal implies for product direction, field priorities, and where GitLab should accelerate, adjust, or go deeper

Advise Executive Leadership And Maintain Strategic Focus

• Represent FDE in conversations with customer executives and senior GitLab stakeholders, bringing a clear point of view on platform adoption, DAP readiness, strategic risk, and where deeper investment is warranted
• Translate the team's work into executive-level insight by framing what FDE is learning in terms of adoption, retention, expansion, product direction, and broader market signal
• Help leadership understand where GitLab should accelerate, adjust, or go deeper based on patterns emerging across strategic accounts, not just the needs of any one engagement
• Bring operating rigor to the role through structured reporting, portfolio reviews, and clear measures that keep the team focused on strategic outcomes rather than reactive activity

Examples Of The Work

• Build the portfolio criteria that determine where FDE should invest next quarter, weighing strategic churn risk, DAP adoption potential, repeatability, and signal value across the candidate accounts
• Author the engagement brief for a flagship DAP account, including the strategic hypothesis the team is there to validate, the success measures, the reusable output expected, and the handoff path back to CS or PS
• Synthesize patterns across three flagship DAP engagements into a structured product brief that shapes roadmap prioritization on AI Gateway, identity, or governance
• Identify that a recurring customer ask is a foundation gap rather than a product gap, and shape the handoff path that gets the customer to the right team with the right framing
• Package a successful advanced DAP workflow from one account into an artifact-library asset and on-the-truck guide that CS, PS, or SA can carry forward without continued FDE involvement
• Determine that a high-risk renewal warrants FDE investment, write the case for that investment, and define what the engagement is there to prove
• Lead a quarterly portfolio review that results in deprioritizing two engagements where signal value has dropped, freeing FDE capacity for higher-leverage work
• Translate repeated field feedback into a decision framework that helps the broader CX organization recognize when to engage FDE versus when to scale through existing motions

What You'll Bring

• Background in field strategy, customer success strategy, technical solutions, product-facing customer roles, or adjacent functions where you shaped complex customer motions and translated field insight into broader organizational action
• Track record of translating customer and field signal into structured recommendations that influenced product direction, go-to-market priorities, or strategic investment decisions
• Executive presence and judgment, with credible experience working with C-suite customers and senior internal leaders, and a clear approach to influencing decisions by bringing a view grounded in customer reality, product strategy, and business impact
• Strong strategic judgment and prioritization skills, able to assess complex customer situations, identify where deeper investment is warranted, and help a small team focus on the work with the highest leverage and broadest signal value
• Ability to translate technical and product concepts, including but not limited to DAP and broader platform capabilities, into clear business narratives, strategic recommendations, and reusable guidance for the field
• Technical literacy deep enough to evaluate FDE work credibly, reason about platform architecture and AI system constraints, and identify when a stated customer ask reflects a foundation gap rather than a product gap, without needing to author what an FDE authors
• Working knowledge of large language models, agentic patterns, and the practical limitations of AI systems in production environments
• Demonstrated ability to use customer, product, and commercial signals to support recommendations, frame business impact, and communicate where the team should invest
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce clear briefs, recommendations, and structured documentation; effective in an async, handbook-first environment
• Genuine enthusiasm for helping customers realize meaningful value from DAP and the broader GitLab platform, especially in complex situations where the standard motion is not enough

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in regulated environments where security, compliance, auditability, or data-sovereignty requirements materially influence architecture decisions
• Experience authoring reference architectures, design standards, maturity models, or technical frameworks adopted across multiple teams or customer environments
• Experience with platform engineering or internal developer platform concepts such as golden paths, paved roads, service templates, developer portals, or self-service provisioning
• Direct familiarity with GitLab platform usage, self-managed deployments, or extension boundaries sufficient to engage credibly in architecture conversations with FDEs and senior customer stakeholders
• Experience with self-managed deployment patterns, air-gapped environments, or similar constrained deployment models

Performance Indicators

The Staff Field Strategist is measured against the four areas of the role:

• Portfolio quality: the FDE portfolio reflects deliberate strategic choices, with clear criteria, regular reassessment, and resistance to reactive engagement
• Scaled outcomes: FDE engagements consistently produce reusable assets, frameworks, and on-the-truck guidance that downstream teams (CS, PS, SA, CX Engineering) pick up and operate without continued FDE dependence
• Product signal: field learnings reach Product as structured, evidence-backed input that influences DAP roadmap, prioritization, and platform direction, rather than as anecdotal feedback
• Executive influence: leadership trusts the Field Strategist's recommendations on where GitLab should accelerate, adjust, or go deeper, and customer executives engage the Field Strategist as a credible strategic counterpart

Travel

Travel should support strategic customer engagements, team on-sites, and key architecture and strategy workshops. This role is expected to travel less than a traditional billable consulting role, but has an expected range of up to 50%.

About The Team

FDE exists because some of GitLab's most important customer situations sit outside the standard field motion, especially where platform adoption, DAP readiness, or strategic churn risk require deeper technical and strategic engagement.

Small by design, high leverage, and high visibility, the team works deeply in a limited number of strategic accounts, proves what works in real customer environments, and turns those learnings into reusable assets, structured product signal, and clearer field motions that can scale across GitLab.

The team sits in the Office of the CCO and works across Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Professional Services, and the broader field to make sure what is learned in strategic accounts changes more than the account itself. In the near term, FDE is focused on DAP adoption and readiness, while helping strategic customers build the platform foundation that makes DAP valuable. The team identifies patterns early, turns them into structured input for Product and reusable assets for the field, and helps ensure the impact of each engagement extends far beyond a single customer.

If that sounds like the kind of work you want to do, let's talk.