Principal Growth Marketing Strategist

An overview of this role

Growth Marketing is the activation and delivery arm of GitLab marketing: campaigns, regional and field marketing, lifecycle and product led growth, marketing engineering and operations, corporate events including Transcend, partner marketing, community programs and Co-Create. If a program connects GitLab to a customer or a buyer, it lives here, and the team is accountable for pipeline, first orders, Flex conversion and expansion, and post sale adoption.

As Principal Growth Marketing Strategist you work directly with the VP of Growth Marketing as a strategic partner and operator. You hold the whole picture of the engine: the goals every function has committed to, the budget and where it is moving, the strategic projects that do not fit cleanly inside any one function, and the decisions that are waiting on an answer. You keep that picture current, you act on it when the VP is engaged elsewhere, and you use it to move work faster.

This is an individual contributor role at the Principal level. You do not manage a team. You manage outcomes across ten functions through influence, judgment and follow through, and you are trusted to speak for Growth Marketing in rooms the VP cannot be in. The people on the leadership team are senior, experienced marketers; they will work with you because you make them faster and sharper, not because of the title.

You will be effective in this role if you have led marketing yourself at a senior level, understand how a modern B2B software company makes money, are curious and hands on with AI in your own work, and can move between a budget trade off, a partner negotiation, a pipeline review and a keynote plan in the same day without losing the thread.

What you'll do

• Run Growth Marketing's operating rhythm: goals, business reviews, planning cycles and the metrics inspection behind them, so decisions get made, recorded and followed through.
• Track commitments across the leadership team between their 1:1s with the VP, so those conversations are about strategy rather than status.
• Own the strategic projects that matter to Growth Marketing and have no single functional home: scope them, find the owner or be the owner, and land them.
• Hold the budget picture across the team, prepare trade offs with a recommendation, and act within the authority the VP has delegated in writing.
• Represent Growth Marketing on the VP's behalf in pipeline reviews, cross functional planning and partner conversations; carry the position in and the decision out.
• Unblock functional leaders when the VP is engaged elsewhere, or stage the issue so it takes one conversation rather than three.
• Be a thinking partner to any functional leader who wants one, offered rather than assigned.
• Partner with marketing's AI Transformation Owner so AI adoption across Growth Marketing is visible, measured and moving.
• Prepare the VP for high stakes moments: executive updates, leadership material, keynotes, customer and partner meetings, with the numbers checked and the first draft written.

What you'll bring

• Extensive experience in B2B software marketing with senior leadership experience: you have owned a marketing function, a large program budget or a go to market motion, and you have been accountable for a pipeline or revenue number.
• Breadth across marketing. You have worked in or closely with demand and digital, field and events, lifecycle or product led growth, partner marketing and marketing operations, and you can hold a credible conversation with an expert in each.
• A track record of landing cross functional projects that nobody owned, through influence rather than authority, with executives, peers and individual contributors.
• Business fluency: you read a P&L, a pipeline report and a budget model comfortably, you understand consumption and subscription business models, and you can explain a trade off to a CFO in plain language.
• Program and operating rhythm experience: goal frameworks, business reviews, planning cycles, and the discipline to keep them honest without turning them into bureaucracy.
• Hands on AI fluency. You use AI tools daily in your own work, you have built or configured something with them, and you are curious about how they change the way a marketing organization operates. Prior experience in a chief of staff, strategy and operations, or business operations role is welcome but not required.
• Executive communication: concise writing, clear verbal briefs, comfort presenting to and being questioned by VPs and C level leaders, and the judgment to know what travels up and what does not.
• Discretion. You will handle confidential people, budget and strategy information every day.
• Familiarity with developer, DevOps or platform engineering audiences, or the ability to get there fast.
• The ability to use GitLab, and to travel occasionally for events and leadership offsites.

About the team

Growth Marketing at GitLab is one integrated engine of roughly 100 people across ten functions, led by the VP of Growth Marketing and reporting into the Chief Product and Marketing Officer. The team runs Transcend, GitLab's flagship event program, the GitHub competitive motion, the regional and partner marketing engines in AMER, EMEA and APJ, the lifecycle and product led growth motions behind GitLab's self serve business, and marketing's AI transformation. The leadership team operates on a small set of shared principles: speed with quality, an ownership mindset, and customer outcomes. You can read more about how marketing operates at GitLab in the handbook.