Senior Director, Global SME Solutions Architecture

Remote · United States of America · USD 244,200-409,500 · 5+ years experience · Remote · Posted Oct 7, 2026

At a glance

As the Senior Director, Global Subject Matter Expertise (SME) Solutions Architecture, you will build and lead GitLab's Subject Matter Expert organization across three regional teams in AMER, EMEA, and APJ.
This is a leader of leaders role where you will manage three regional SME Managers and develop them as leaders, acting as a transformational leader who thrives in ambiguity.
You will work as a peer to GitLab's regional Solutions Architecture Senior Directors and partner closely with Sales, Customer Success, Product, Engineering, Product Marketing, and Sales Operations.

Set the strategy, operating model and global standards for the SME organization, aligned to the VP Global SA and GitLab's go-to-market plan.
Build the resourcing model from product-level bookings and consumption targets.
Act as the field's senior partner to Product Management and Engineering by running a structured feedback loop.
Hire, mentor and develop regional SME Managers and, through them, the full global team.
Own the engagement model with the regional SA Senior Directors, Post-Sales SAs and Customer Success.
Create and improve upon the processes, metrics and KPIs for SME-led technical evaluations, workshops, demos and Proofs of Value.
Partner with CRO staff, regional sales leaders and AVPs on product-category performance, forecast risk and competitive strategy.
Partner with Enablement to drive field readiness for new product launches with Product Marketing and Enablement.
Build strong relationships with key customers at the technical sponsor and executive level.
Use AI to change how the team works, including deal research, demo creation, PoV automation and knowledge sharing.

5+ years second-line leadership experience (managing managers) in Solutions Architecture, Sales Engineering or a technical specialist organization.
Experience building or scaling a specialist, overlay or global SA team in enterprise SaaS, DevSecOps, security or developer tools.
A record of tying technical-team design to bookings and consumption outcomes, with the data to show it.
The ability to lead through ambiguity and rapid organizational change, bringing clarity and direction while strategy is still forming.
Strong relationships with Product and Engineering leaders, and a history of shaping roadmap from field insight.
Fluency across the software development lifecycle, application security (SAST, DAST, SCA), cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), Kubernetes and AI-assisted development, including LLM evaluation and production deployment patterns.
Executive presence with technical practitioners, managers and C-level stakeholders.
Proven ability to partner across Sales, Partners, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Customer Success and Professional Services.
A self-starting, entrepreneurial approach.