i applied for a senior engineering manager role at GitLab and made it to the final round earlier this spring. sharing the behavioral prep stuff because i think it's underrated for GitLab specifically.
first thing to know: GitLab has 10+ company values that they take seriously. the full list is public in their handbook (which is literally public online). they will ask behavioral questions that map to specific values. this isn't just culture-fit fluff, they're actually mapping your answers.
some of the values questions that came up across my three behavioral interviews: 'tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information and couldn't wait for consensus' (this is their 'bias for action' / 'results' value) 'describe a situation where you had a strong opinion but changed your mind based on new data' (transparency + iteration) 'how have you worked with a teammate in a completely different time zone where async was the only option?' (remote-first collaboration -- this one is almost guaranteed to come up) 'tell me about something you shipped that you later realized was a mistake. what did you do?' (ownership / blameless culture) 'when did you have to push back on a product decision even when it was unpopular?' (directness)
the async angle is real. GitLab is genuinely all-remote and async-first. every behavioral round touched on how you handle communication when you can't just tap someone on the shoulder. if your examples are all 'i walked over to their desk and we figured it out,' you need different examples.
prep tip: read the GitLab Values page + the section on 'collaboration' in their handbook before the loop. it's not a long read and it telegraphs exactly what they're looking for. map your STAR stories to specific values before you go in. i had a spreadsheet with columns: value, situation, outcome. it helped a lot.
the tone in my behavioral rounds was genuinely warm and conversational, not interrogative. the interviewers volunteered their own examples when they asked questions, which made it feel more like a real discussion. that was refreshing.