Director, Social Media

An overview of this role

As Director, Social Media, you'll lead GitLab's global social media strategy and help people understand how GitLab is co-creating the future of software development. The role shapes how GitLab shows up across social channels, connecting our company, product, and employer stories, to build meaningful engagement with customers, users, contributors, candidates, and industry audiences. Expect to set clear priorities, guide execution, and use insights to strengthen GitLab's voice and business impact. You'll own the outcomes of GitLab's social function — strategy, budget, team development, tooling, and results — and serve as GitLab's senior-most voice on social strategy with executive stakeholders.

This is a player-coach role. You'll set the strategy and stay close enough to the work to write, build, and ship alongside the team. Two Social Media Managers report to the head of corporate communication and work with you on a dotted-line basis. You'll set their strategic direction, raise the editorial and craft bar, and develop them as practitioners, including goal-setting, feedback, and career development in partnership with their manager. Influence matters in this role, which is why it calls for someone who has already led and grown social practitioners. 

What you’ll do

• Own the performance of GitLab's social function and its contribution to marketing and business goals.
• Lead GitLab's global organic social media strategy, channel plans, and editorial priorities.
• Own GitLab's YouTube strategy end to end — channel architecture, programming and series development, long- and short-form video, packaging (titles, thumbnails, metadata), search and recommendation optimization, and subscriber and watch-time growth.
• Partner with Growth Marketing on paid social, including briefing creative, aligning organic and paid on shared audiences and messaging, informing boosting and amplification decisions, and connecting paid performance back to organic strategy.
• Develop clear, audience-focused campaigns that support company, product, brand, and talent goals.
• Guide content planning and publishing across social channels while maintaining a consistent GitLab voice.
• Own the social media budget, tooling stack, and agency, freelance, and production partner relationships.
• Partner with teams across Marketing, Communications, Product, Sales, Talent Acquisition, and other functions to plan and deliver social programs.
• Build processes that support effective collaboration in GitLab's all-remote, asynchronous environment.
• Use social listening, audience insights, and performance data to improve content and inform broader marketing decisions.
• Lead the measurement framework for social — KPIs, dashboards, and reporting cadence — and report performance and learnings to marketing and executive leadership.
• Partner with DevRel on community engagement to help GitLab participate in relevant industry conversations with a clear, useful point of view.
• Build and run creator, influencer, and advocacy programs, including developer creators, GitLab community contributors, and team member advocacy.
• Own GitLab's employee advocacy program — grow participation across Marketing, Sales, Engineering, and Talent, equip team members with content worth sharing, and measure reach, engagement, and contribution to brand and talent goals. Partner with Communications and Talent Acquisition on enablement, and manage the advocacy platform and its adoption.
• Support executive and expert social presence, partnering with Communications to help GitLab leaders and technical experts show up credibly on social, including constructive conversations with C-suite executives about proposed content.
• Apply AI tools thoughtfully across the social workflow to help GitLab model what an AI-native marketing team looks like.
• Prepare for and guide responses to sensitive or fast-moving issues in partnership with the appropriate teams.

What you’ll bring

• 10+ years in social media, including at least 5 years leading social strategy for a global brand at the senior manager level or above, and accountable for the function's results.
• Experience owning a social function end to end, including strategy, budget, headcount, tooling, and results as the accountable leader. 
• Experience leading teams, agencies, and cross-functional programs, with clear ownership of and accountability for outcomes.
• Depth in YouTube strategy, including owning and growing a brand or business channel, and can speak to programming decisions, video formats, packaging, and the metrics that actually move a channel.
• Hands-on experience growing LinkedIn and X as primary channels, with judgment about what content, format, and cadence work on each.
• Experience with paid social programs and how organic and paid social reinforce each other, including creative for paid, audience strategy, and interpreting paid performance data.
• Experience connecting social media programs to broader brand, communications, product, or business priorities.
• Strong editorial judgment and the ability to turn complex topics into clear, engaging content.
• Fluency with short-form and long-form video as core social formats, including working with production partners and creators.
• Experience defining a measurement framework for social, including KPIs, dashboards, and reporting cadence, and presenting performance, learnings, and recommendations to executive leadership on a standing basis.
• Experience building or scaling an employee advocacy program, including driving adoption across multiple functions, sustaining participation beyond launch, and reporting attributed reach and business contribution
• Fluency with an enterprise social stack for publishing, listening, and advocacy. Ours is Sprout Social, Meltwater, and EveryoneSocial.
• Experience running social programs across multiple regions and languages, and judgment about what to localize versus centralize.
• Skill in managing multiple priorities and making sound decisions in fast-moving situations.
• A collaborative, inclusive approach and the ability to work effectively in a distributed, asynchronous environment.
• Passion about GitLab's mission and the future of software development, open source, artificial intelligence, and DevSecOps.

About the team

This role is part of GitLab's Marketing organization and works across teams to present a clear, consistent company voice on social media. The team collaborates asynchronously with partners across regions and functions, balancing planned campaigns with timely engagement. Together, you'll help audiences understand GitLab's platform, mission, values, and impact.