Sr. Director - Global Renewals

An overview of this role

You'll be stepping into a pivotal leadership role where customer retention meets strategic business growth. As Senior Director of Renewals, you'll own one of the most critical moments in our customer journey - ensuring we continue delivering exceptional value that drives successful contract renewals. This role puts you at the heart of GitLab's revenue engine, where your strategic vision and operational excellence will directly impact our ability to grow and scale our business globally.

You'll be leading a world-class renewals organization that works seamlessly across Sales, Customer Success, and channel partners. This is your opportunity to shape the future of how we retain and grow our customer base, while creating predictable revenue streams through data-driven processes and innovative approaches to customer engagement. You'll be tackling complex challenges around renewal predictability, customer satisfaction, and process optimization in a fast-paced, high-growth SaaS environment.

What You'll Do

• Lead customer retention through proactive planning, management, and execution of renewals with customers and internal teams

• Develop and communicate the Renewals Team vision and strategy, prioritizing team efforts, initiatives, and OKRs

• Own and drive the renewals process in collaboration with Sales, Customer Success, and channel partners

• Hire, coach, and motivate a global renewals team focused on goal achievement, delivery to KPIs and OKRs, and team member development

• Continuously develop renewals processes, policies, and playbooks to improve renewal predictability, efficiency, and customer satisfaction

• Identify and manage renewal risks and expansion opportunities, maintaining accurate forecast of upcoming renewals

• Drive systems, data, and product improvements to enable successful renewals and predictive visibility of renewals

• Negotiate and execute renewal contracts in alignment with customer goals and partnership from Revenue Operations and Legal

What You'll Bring

• Proven track record of successfully delivering to revenue goals for a SaaS or subscription business at scale in a sales and/or renewal leadership role

• Experience developing and growing global teams and operations, including leading teams at scale (managed teams of over 30 team members)

• Experience leading continuous improvement and change management across a broad range of functional stakeholders

• Ability to successfully deliver to goals, build, and iterate in a fast-paced environment, working with a bias for action

• Data-driven mindset with experience leading system changes and automation to improve operational effectiveness and efficiency

• Deep understanding of both direct and channel go-to-market sales and renewals

• Value-led leadership approach with ability to role model and nurture GitLab's values

• Ability to use GitLab

About the team

The Renewals team operates at a critical juncture in the customer lifecycle, focusing on the essential moment that determines whether we continue our partnership with customers. This team is the guardian of customer retention, working collaboratively with Sales, Customer Success, Channel Partners, and Sales Operations to ensure seamless contract renewals while delivering exceptional customer experiences.

What makes this team unique is their dual focus on both relationship management and operational excellence. They're not just processing renewals - they're strategic partners who understand customer needs, identify growth opportunities, and drive process innovations that scale across GitLab's global customer base. The team tackles fascinating challenges around predictive analytics, automated workflows, and cross-functional collaboration in a remote-first environment.

The Renewals organization is positioned to be a key driver of GitLab's continued growth, with accountability for critical metrics including gross retention, on-time renewals, and customer satisfaction. This team thrives on turning complex renewal scenarios into streamlined, predictable processes that benefit both customers and GitLab's business objectives.

The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of listed locations only. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, and alignment with market data. See more information on our benefits and equity. Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.

California/Colorado/Hawaii/New Jersey/New York/Washington/DC/Illinois/Minnesota pay range

$185,920—$389,400 USD