Senior Manager - Solutions Architecture SME

An overview of this role

You'll build and lead the regional team of product Subject Matter Experts who win GitLab's most complex opportunities. Your team covers four product groups: Security & Compliance, Platform, Core DevSecOps, and AI & Competitive. You'll partner with regional sales leadership to decide where SMEs go, coach your team to technical wins, and make sure every engagement leaves the Account team stronger. This is a player-coach role. You'll stay close to the technology and step into critical deals yourself.

What you'll do

• Hire, develop and retain a regional team of SMEs across four product groups, with a clear growth path for each person.
• Run the regional engagement model with Account SA and Post-Sales leaders. Keep triage fast, coverage focused on the top opportunities, and the line between Account SA and SME ownership clear.
• Partner with regional sales leaders and AVPs on deal strategy, forecast calls and product-category plans.
• Review SME coverage weekly against the regional pipeline. Move capacity to where product-category commit and consumption are at risk.
• Step into strategic deals as an executive technical sponsor when the opportunity calls for it.
• Coach SMEs on PoV design, executive storytelling and competitive positioning. Hold a high bar for technical quality.
• Keep engagement and outcome data accurate in Salesforce so the team's impact is visible and measurable.
• Work with your peer regional managers and the Senior Director on shared assets, enablement programs and a consistent global playbook.
• Bring regional customer and competitive signals to Product and Engineering through the Senior Director.
• Build a team culture of trust, ownership and learning. Celebrate wins openly and treat misses as data.

What you'll bring

• 5+ Years experience leading technical pre-sales, solutions architecture or consulting, including time leading teams of technical individual contributors.
• Hands-on depth in at least one of the four product groups, and enough breadth to coach across all four, including working fluency with AI-assisted development.
• A record of hiring and developing high-performing technical specialists or SAs.
• Experience partnering with sales leaders on enterprise forecasts, deal strategy and territory planning.
• Comfort with data. You can show how your team moves win rates, cycle times and consumption.
• Strong executive presence with customers and internal leaders.
• Experience leading through change, with clear and steady communication.
• Experience running an overlay or specialist team, or launching a new team or product category.
• Ability to travel at least 25% 

How you'll be measured

• Regional product-category commit attainment and consumption growth.
• Technical win rate, PoV conversion and time to production use on SME-engaged opportunities.
• SME coverage of the top 10% of regional opportunities, and lead time from request to engagement.
• Account SA satisfaction with SME support.
• Team hiring, ramp time, engagement and retention.
• EAP Participation Rates for your given geography

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About the team

SMEs are part of GitLab's Solutions Architecture team, a trusted technical partner for the field. The SME organization brings the deepest product expertise to GitLab's most complex opportunities, scales that expertise into the Account SA team, and carries customer feedback into product direction, enablement and value messaging. The team is distributed and all-remote.