GitLab Inc.
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2012 to present
Bill Staples is the CEO of GitLab, in the role since 2024. The first chief executive was Sid Sijbrandij, from 2012.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Staples | Chief Executive Officer | 2024 | Present | 2 |
| Sid Sijbrandij | Co-founder, Executive Chair (CEO until December 2024) | 2012 | Present | 14 |
GitLab is the largest independent alternative to Microsoft's GitHub. Instead of hosting code and relying on integrations for everything else, GitLab ships planning, source control, CI/CD, security testing, package registries, deployment and AI agents in a single application. It has no physical headquarters: the company is incorporated in Delaware, lists a San Francisco address, and runs as an all-remote employer with about 2,580 team members across 60 countries as of January 31, 2026, documenting how it works in a public handbook. The company is headquartered in Remote-first (formerly San Francisco). The incredibly aggressive open-source challenger was founded in Ukraine in 2011, fighting a massive uphill battle against GitHub by building a single, universally unified application for the entire DevOps lifecycle.
GitLab makes money mainly by selling per-seat subscriptions to its Premium and Ultimate tiers, delivered either as SaaS on GitLab.com, as single-tenant GitLab Dedicated, or as self-managed software installed on a customer's own servers. The core Community Edition is open source and the Free tier drives bottom-up adoption; paying customers upgrade for enterprise controls, security testing (SAST, DAST, dependency and container scanning), compliance and planning features that sit mostly in Ultimate. AI capabilities are sold through GitLab Duo add-ons, GitLab Credits and the Duo Agent Platform, and in Q2 FY2027 the company introduced GitLab Flex, a single annual commitment covering seats, credits and new usage-based capabilities. Revenue is recognized ratably for most subscriptions, which made $1.14 billion of remaining performance obligations available at January 31, 2026.
Chief Executive Officer
2024 – Present
2 years (current)
Became CEO in December 2024. Has pushed GitLab toward AI agents (Duo Agent Platform, Orbit), introduced the usage-based GitLab Flex model and led the 2026 'Act 2' restructuring.
Former CEO of New Relic and longtime Microsoft and Adobe executive, brought in to scale GitLab past $1 billion in revenue.
Co-founder, Executive Chair (CEO until December 2024)
2012 – Present
14 years (current)
Sijbrandij famously mandated an entirely remote, asynchronous workforce from the company's inception, entirely eschewing physical offices well before the COVID-19 pandemic.
As CEO, he aggressively positioned GitLab as a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, directly challenging the fragmented toolchains offered by Microsoft and Atlassian.
These officers report to the chief executive and are not part of the CEO timeline above.
GitLab's main challenge is competing with Microsoft's GitHub, which pairs the largest developer community with GitHub Copilot and Azure enterprise agreements. Atlassian bundles Bitbucket with Jira, and many large companies still run best-of-breed stacks such as Jenkins, Snyk, SonarQube and JFrog Artifactory. On the Q1 FY2027 call, CFO Jessica Ross said a price-sensitive cohort representing roughly 20% of ARR remained under pressure and that seat contraction tied to customer layoffs was higher than expected, a direct risk for a seat-based model as AI coding agents change how many developer seats companies buy. GitLab also remains GAAP-unprofitable: it lost $56.0 million in FY2026 and $36.8 million in Q2 FY2027, when GAAP operating margin was -20% partly because of 'Act 2' restructuring that included a roughly 14% workforce reduction.
Bill Staples has been CEO of GitLab since December 2024. He previously served as CEO of New Relic and held senior roles at Microsoft and Adobe.
Under Sid Sijbrandij, GitLab grew from an open-source project into a public company, joined Y Combinator in 2015, raised venture funding and listed on Nasdaq in October 2021. He stepped down as CEO in December 2024 and remains executive chair.
Sid Sijbrandij pioneered all-remote management practices, authoring and publicly publishing GitLab's large company handbook. He proved that a multi-thousand-person global enterprise could achieve high velocity, operational rigor, and IPO success without physical corporate offices.
GitLab's current leadership includes CEO Bill Staples and CFO Jessica Ross, with co-founder Sid Sijbrandij serving as executive chair of the board.
GitLab went public with a dual-class share structure (Class A common stock with one vote per share and Class B common stock with 10 votes per share), ensuring co-founder Sid Sijbrandij and long-term insiders maintained governance stability during early public company growth.
Sid Sijbrandij disclosed treatment for osteosarcoma and stepped down as CEO in December 2024 to focus on his health, handing the role to Bill Staples while staying on as executive chair.
GitLab ties executive compensation to revenue growth milestones, non-GAAP operating margin targets, free cash flow expansion, and relative total shareholder return (TSR), aligning executive financial incentives with long-term shareholder value creation.
Staples has focused GitLab on AI agents through the Duo Agent Platform and Orbit, introduced the GitLab Flex pricing model and led the 2026 'Act 2' restructuring aimed at durable growth and margin.
Sid Sijbrandij is the co-founder and CEO. He is a massive pioneer of remote work. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to work from home, Sijbrandij built GitLab as a 100% all-remote company, with zero physical corporate headquarters and thousands of employees spread across 60+ countries.
Compare executive leadership tenures and strategic transitions
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