Director, Customer Success, EMEA

Position overview

GitLab is looking for a strategic, commercially minded, and operationally rigorous Director of Customer Success to lead our EMEA Customer Success Management & Architecture (CSMA) and Customer Success Engineering (CSE) organizations.

This leader will own the regional customer-success operating model across relationship management, adoption architecture, technical enablement, customer health, and outcome realization. The role brings together the strengths of CSMA and CSE so customers can move from implementation to adoption, measurable business outcomes, expansion, and renewal with a consistent experience.

You will lead through managers and senior leaders, build a high-performing all-remote organization, and partner closely with Sales, Renewal Management, Professional Services, Support, Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Customer Success Operations.

What you will do

Set the regional customer-success strategy

• Translate GitLab’s customer-outcomes strategy into a clear EMEA plan for CSMA and CSE.
• Define the regional engagement model, coverage strategy, segmentation, capacity model, and operating rhythm across dedicated, pooled, and scaled motions.
• Establish a single view of the customer journey, from onboarding and implementation through adoption, optimization, expansion, and renewal.
• Ensure the organization consistently connects GitLab adoption to customer-defined business outcomes—not activity, features, or meetings alone.
• Represent EMEA customer needs and patterns in global Customer Success strategy and planning.

Lead CSMA and CSE as one integrated organization

• Build strong alignment between CSMA relationship leadership and CSE technical expertise, with clear roles, handoffs, decision rights, and escalation paths.
• Ensure every appropriate customer has a current success plan with measurable outcomes, milestones, owners, risks, and next actions.
• Create a consistent approach to adoption architecture, use-case progression, technical enablement, and value realization.
• Develop scalable programs—such as webinars, hands-on labs, office hours, adoption plays, and executive engagements—that increase customer reach and impact.
• Partner with Professional Services to create continuity from implementation through adoption, including high-quality handoffs and clear ownership after delivery.
• Ensure CSE capacity is focused on the moments that most improve adoption, time-to-value, customer health, and expansion readiness.

Drive adoption, outcomes, and GitLab platform value

• Make product adoption and verified customer outcomes the centre of the operating model.
• Build the capabilities required to help customers adopt GitLab’s strategic use cases, including GitLab Duo and the Duo Agent Platform where relevant to customer objectives.
• Use product-usage data, customer feedback, success-plan progress, and health signals to identify risk and prioritize intervention.
• Establish repeatable plays to accelerate onboarding, remove adoption blockers, increase breadth and depth of use, and support customers in achieving measurable value.
• Partner with Sales and Renewal Management to turn adoption progress and outcome evidence into a credible expansion and renewal narrative.

Own operational excellence and business performance

• Establish a disciplined cadence for forecasting, customer health, risk management, pipeline inspection, capacity planning, and performance reviews.
• Define a balanced scorecard for CSMA and CSE that includes customer outcomes, adoption, retention health, expansion influence, coverage, productivity, quality, and team development.
• Improve data quality and operational consistency across Gainsight, Salesforce, reporting dashboards, and other systems of record.
• Ensure customer escalations are handled with clear ownership, appropriate executive engagement, and timely cross-functional coordination.
• Identify systemic friction in the customer journey and lead continuous-improvement initiatives that scale across EMEA and globally.

Build and develop an exceptional team

• Recruit, develop, coach, and retain high-performing CSMA and CSE leaders and practitioners across EMEA.
• Set clear expectations for customer leadership, technical depth, commercial acumen, operational discipline, and collaboration.
• Create career paths, enablement plans, mentoring programs, and succession plans for both disciplines.
• Foster an inclusive, accountable, and high-trust culture consistent with GitLab’s values and all-remote ways of working.
• Use talent, capacity, and organizational design decisions to ensure the team can support a changing portfolio and evolving product strategy.

Partner across the revenue and product ecosystem

• Build trusted relationships with regional Sales and Renewal Management leaders while maintaining clear accountability for CS-owned outcomes and signals.
• Partner with Professional Services on shared customer plans, implementation-to-adoption transitions, and services attach opportunities.
• Bring structured customer insight to Product, Engineering, Support, Marketing, and Enablement.
• Orchestrate executive engagement for strategic customers and high-severity risks.
• Collaborate with global Customer Success leaders to standardize what should scale and preserve the regional adaptations that improve customer impact.

What success looks like

• Customers achieve measurable outcomes and progress through their intended GitLab use cases.
• CSMA and CSE operate as one coordinated team with clear ownership, effective handoffs, and a consistent customer experience.
• Adoption, customer health, renewal risk, and expansion signals are visible, accurate, and acted on early.
• GitLab’s strategic capabilities—including Duo and the Duo Agent Platform—are adopted in ways that align to customer priorities and measurable value.
• EMEA improves time-to-value, retention health, customer advocacy, and expansion influence.
• The organization has strong leadership depth, healthy talent pipelines, and a culture of accountability and continuous learning.
• Operating metrics and forecasts are trusted by regional and global leadership.

What you bring

• Significant leadership experience in Customer Success, Customer Experience, Technical Account Management, or a related post-sales function in an enterprise SaaS or subscription software business.
• Experience leading both customer-facing relationship teams and technical customer-facing teams, ideally through managers and senior managers.
• A track record of improving customer adoption, measurable outcomes, retention, and expansion in complex enterprise accounts.
• Experience designing or scaling coverage models across dedicated, pooled, digital, or programmatic customer-success motions.
• Strong understanding of customer lifecycle management, success planning, health and risk management, adoption metrics, and renewal/expansion partnership.
• Ability to lead technical and business conversations with senior customer stakeholders, including executives, technology leaders, and engineering audiences.
• Strong operational discipline, including forecasting, capacity planning, KPI design, data quality, and inspection cadences.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across Sales, Renewal Management, Professional Services, Product, Engineering, Support, and Operations.
• Experience hiring, developing, and retaining distributed teams across multiple countries and cultures.
• Excellent written, verbal, and executive communication skills.
• Experience with DevSecOps, software development lifecycle, developer platforms, or enterprise technology transformation.
• Experience leading adoption of AI, developer productivity, security, or platform capabilities.
• Familiarity with customer-success platforms and revenue systems such as Gainsight and Salesforce.
• Experience operating in a high-growth, global, all-remote company.
• Experience building scaled enablement programs, technical communities, or pooled specialist models.