Data Lead

We're hiring a Data Lead at Gitpod.

Reporting to the COO, you'll own and evolve Gitpod's data function as we scale. At Gitpod, data drives everything we do - from product decisions and user experience to our go-to-market strategy and operational efficiency. You'll be the primary owner of our entire data stack, from infrastructure to insights, focusing on building simple, maintainable solutions that drive business impact. This is a unique opportunity to further build out the data function, shape our data strategy and architecture while working closely with teams across the organization to advance our data maturity.

Who we are

Five years ago, we set out to create a world where every software engineer is instantly ready-to-code. With over 1.5 million users, we are now the leading platform for standardized and automated development environments. In 2024, we quadrupled enterprise revenue, signed several seven-figure contracts with F500 companies, launched our AI-first product architecture and, most importantly, discovered our authentic rhythm. In 2025, we amp up our ambition.
We're a talent-dense group of people who transform how software is created, working to empower every company, every team, and every individual to succeed in a software-first world.
We care deeply, and for many of us, building Gitpod is our life's work.
This is the best time to join the company. We've found product-market-fit and are scaling with high intensity towards repeatable go-to-market fit. Our operating principles are an honest representation of how we build relationships and make decisions. We choose colleagues carefully based on merit and their authentic alignment with those principles. If this excites you, we would love for you to apply.

Role responsibilities

We hold our operating principles as the standard that we drive towards. Joining Gitpod means you have ownership around forming our culture by living out these principles and holding others accountable towards them.

In addition, here are the main areas of focus:

• End-to-end ownership: Own and scale Gitpod's data platform end-to-end, from data ingestion, warehousing, and transformation to analytics and visualization. Make architectural decisions that balance immediate needs with future scalability while maintaining high reliability and cost efficiency.

• Decision making: Drive data-informed decision making across the company by building and maintaining core business metrics, partnering with teams to define KPIs, and creating self-service analytics capabilities.

• Maintain best practices: Establish and maintain data engineering best practices including documentation standards, testing procedures, monitoring systems, and disaster recovery processes. Build reusable components and frameworks that enable sustainable scaling of our data function.

• Enable Sales: Enable our enterprise sales motion by developing systems to track customer behavior, evolving our lead enrichment pipelines and ensuring marketing, sales and customer experience have the insights and data they need in the right places.

• Partnership: Partner cross-functionally to understand data needs, implement solutions, and communicate insights effectively. Train and enable internal teams on self-service analytics tools while maintaining high standards for data quality and accessibility.

At the end of your first 30 days, you will have:

• Conducted a critical audit of our current data stack and architecture. Mapped out all components, their dependencies, and discuss their business value. Identified areas of optimisation, specifically with regards to simplification.

• Met with key stakeholders (COO, Sales, Product, Engineering) to understand their essential data needs and priorities. Aggregated requests and clarified "must-haves" from "nice-to-haves" to inform stack simplification decisions. Built a clear picture of what's truly critical for our path for 2025.

• Created a system health assessment documenting reliability issues, maintenance overhead, and cost efficiency of each component and identified immediate risks and opportunities for consolidation or replacement with simpler solutions.

• Developed and present a 90-day roadmap that prioritizes: (1) critical system simplifications, (2) essential reliability fixes, and (3) high-impact strategic initiatives.

• Began implementing quick wins focused on simplification - whether that's consolidating redundant pipelines, removing unused data assets, or streamlining overly complex workflows. Focused on changes that reduce maintenance overhead while maintaining or improving stakeholder value.

About you

• You work in alignment with our operating principles. Our operating principles unite everybody at Gitpod to make grounded, high-quality decisions in uncharted territory. We hold them high, evolve them as we evolve, and integrate them into everything we do. We expect everyone at Gitpod to actively use the principles as the playbook for how they make decisions and build relationships.

• You simplify complexity. You’re great at breaking down complex problems into manageable pieces and designing elegant solutions. Whether you're tackling a new problem or untangling existing systems, you have a knack for finding the simplest path forward. With deep experience across the modern data stack, you know when to use (and more importantly, when not to use) different tools and approaches. You don’t get attached to what is built, and you're not afraid to challenge existing solutions and replace them with simpler alternatives. Rather than chasing the latest trends or over-engineering for hypothetical future needs, you thoughtfully choose approaches that maximize maintainability while minimizing complexity.

• You're a business partner, building for impact. You see data as a means to drive business outcomes, not just a technical challenge to solve. You build strong partnerships with stakeholders by anticipating their needs, understanding their challenges, and jointly identifying opportunities where data can drive growth. You get energy from understanding the "why" behind a request and find joy in delivering value, whether it’s through complex data engineering challenges, creating dashboards, or diving deep into analytics. Your versatility across the data stack isn't just about technical capability - it's about choosing the right focus at the right time to move the business forward.

• You're resilient, autonomous, and thrive in ambiguity. You excel at navigating uncertain environments and defining the path forward. As the owner of our data function, you're energized by the opportunity to shape and drive decisions. You remain calm under pressure and adapt quickly as priorities shift. Rather than waiting for perfect information or direction, you're comfortable making educated decisions and adjusting course as you learn. You see ambiguity as an opportunity to create structure and find clarity and have the ability to bring others along on the journey with you.

Additionally, we're looking for someone with most of the following:

• Experience being the primary owner of a data function, ideally in a fast-growing startup or scale-up environment

• Built or significantly evolved data platforms that directly supported business growth

• Track record of successfully wearing multiple hats across the data stack - from data engineering to analytics. Examples of projects spanning different areas of the data lifecycle

• Experience with modern data stack tools like dbt, Prefect, Census or other orchestration and reverse ETL tools, modern warehouses (ideally BigQuery)

• Background working with product analytics and data from multiple other first/third party data sources, experience building up a customer data platform

• Evidence of stakeholder collaboration and business impact

• Basic JavaScript experience

We use these tools and expect you to have familiarity with most of them:

• Segment, Prefect, Census

• BigQuery

• dbt

• Mixpanel, Hex, Metabase

Benefits

• Remote-first, flexible work day

• Flexible paid time off including holidays that are most meaningful to you

• Parental leave for all parents

• Employee-friendly equity terms (extended exercise)

• Health insurance (country-specific)

• Retirement (country-specific)

• Wellness allowance

• Premium work-from-home equipment

• Regular company off-sites

Interview process

We are remote-first and so is our hiring process. Contingent on schedules, we aim to complete the entire process in about 2 weeks. We are conscious of your time and are committed to being as efficient as possible.

1. We'll kick the process off with an intro call to see if there is mutual interest in moving forward.

2. Next, you'll complete a series of interviews designed to thoroughly evaluate our mutual compatibility.

   • Hiring manager

   • Head of people

   • Peer chat

   • Project and panel presentation

   • CEO

3. References and background check - Before moving to an offer, we’ll set up video calls with 3 direct managers and/or senior leaders that can speak to your performance. Additionally, we will run a full background check (location dependent)

Gitpod provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.