Qualifications Summary
Lyle's career has taken him across five countries, five languages, and a lot of different job titles — from writing software for nonprofits in Cambodia to running cross-functional programs at a publicly traded software company. That breadth of experience is less a resume curiosity than a practical asset: having actually worked in technical, operational, legal, and customer-facing contexts makes it easier to find common ground across them. The through-line has always been showing up curious, listening well, and figuring out how to help.
Selected Accomplishments
Joined as the second manager on a 20-person support team. In the first eight months, raising SLA achievement from 50% to 95%+. Over the following five years, helped scale the global organization to 15+ leaders overseeing 100+ ICs, building formal interconnects between support and other areas of the company, setting up the technical foundations for serving customer needs at scale, and introducing inclusive hiring practices that made Support one of the first departments at GitLab to require diverse interviewer panels.
In July 2019, participated in the CEO Shadow Program, observing GitLab's CEO over a two week period. One highlight was presenting GitLab to investors during the Non-deal Roadshow and DevOps Enterprise Summit in London. Recognized as President's Club non-Field VIP in 2023 — an engineering leader honored for unlocking a new commercial segment through 24/7 US Government support.
Co-designed a data privacy workflow coordinating Legal, Marketing, Data, and Support teams — using GitLab's own product as the tooling — establishing a scalable, auditable process for handling privacy requests across the company.
Currently serving as Technical Program Manager for GitLab.com's reliability program — spanning Engineering, Customer Success, Support, Legal, and Corporate Communications — accountable for program results while driving platform availability toward a 99.9% uptime target and improving mean time to mitigate from over 2 hours to under 90 minutes across Q1–Q2 2026.
Mentored 30+ people within and outside of GitLab — including women in technical and leadership roles through GitLab's Women's TMRG, and engineering leaders across industries through independent practice — focusing on career development, leadership, and navigating ambiguity in cross-functional environments.
Work History
GitLab January 2018 - Present: Remote
GitLab is an open core software company that provides a DevSecOps platform used by more than 30 million registered users. GitLab's DevSecOps platform helps teams reduce development cycle times, improve deployment frequency, and ship secure software faster.
Principal Technical Program Manager, R&D PMO July 2025 – Present
- Established end-to-end program management for GitLab's single-tenant SaaS ("Dedicated") customer migrations; allocation framework tracking 8+ concurrent enterprise projects with zero escalations
- Resolved ultra-scale automotive manufacturer escalation on GitLab Dedicated; reduced Gitaly CPU saturation to stable operational levels in 6 weeks, preventing multi-million ARR churn
- Led 99.9% SLA program across Legal, Finance, Support, and Engineering; this work was presented to the CTO and Board of Directors; engaged Gartner analysts to validate approach
- Drove Incidents 2.0: standardized incident management across Engineering and Security (SIRT/PSIRT); shipped Dedicated status page with Switchboard communications capability
- Delivered AI enablement trainings and built R&D PMO YouTube playlist for team knowledge-sharing
Director of Support, Global Readiness May 2022 – July 2025
- Scaled global Support from 2 managers / 20 ICs to 15+ leaders overseeing 100+ ICs
- Established 24x7 on-call processes integrating SaaS Emergencies, CMOC, and Support Manager rotations; recognized as President's Club non-Field VIP (May 2023) for building 24/7 US Government support, unlocking new sales opportunities and customers
- Introduced Support Stable Counterparts aligning engineers and managers across product areas; drove 44% increase in documentation contributions
- Led GDPR-driven account deletion workflow using GitLab Service Desk, coordinating Legal, Marketing, and Support Operations
- Managed Support Readiness team responsible for tools, workflows, training, and process across the global Support organization
- Implemented inclusive hiring process changes; introduced monthly Source-a-thons for underrepresented group candidates
- Mentored team members through Women's TMRG mentorship program
Senior Manager, Support Engineering June 2020 – May 2022
- Grew segment from 3 IC reports to 3 managers and 24 indirect reports
- Increased AMER Support Engineer efficiency by 30% while maintaining SLA targets during high ticket volume growth
- Managed multi-team escalations for enterprise migrations and SaaS incidents
- Led effort to bring Support into the CMOC incident management role; co-authored GDPR-driven account deletion workflow
Manager, Support Engineering January 2018 – June 2020
- Built AMER Support Engineering foundations: hiring, onboarding, escalation processes, and on-call workflows
- Contributed to growth of global Support team from early-stage 20-person organization to scaled multi-region team
Asian Hope August 2009 - December 2017: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Asian Hope is an international nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of vulnerable children in Cambodia through education.
As the Management of Information Systems (MIS) Director, I partnered with our top executives to transform our nonprofit into an enterprise class organization. At this level I leveraged enterprise-wide information to re-engineer IT infrastructure and team strategy across locations and continents, bringing both into efficient alignment with our key priorities.
Some notable accomplishments:
- founded and grew the MIS department to efficiently serve the IT infrastructure, technical support, training and policy needs of Asian Hope
- planned the growth, infrastructure and budgets as Asian Hope grew from serving 30 staff at one location to 800 staff and students at 6 locations
- transitioned the organization to operate on a "free software first" philosophy, which saved 5% of our total annual operating budget, and allowed us to mentor partner organizations making similar changes
- orchestrated a cross-department effort to gather requirements for a custom monitoring and evaluation system. As the product owner I oversaw all technical decisions, developed the data model, roadmap and wrote the majority of the code.
- deployed and wrote tooling around student information systems (SIS) as well as developed a thorough training program for our staff. The usage of these systems has saved >50,000 employee hours in the 7 years since deployment
- planned and wrote software for large parts of Asian Hope's Employee Management system, which lets our HR staff manage student and employee details using an intuitive AngularJS-based UI.
- deployed Google Apps domains for the organization and schools, including sync to our LDAP server for thousands of users
- deployed JIRA and Confluence and trained staff across departments for the purposes of internal documentation and trouble ticketing
The JET Programme is Japanese government initiative that brings native speakers of English to Japan as Assistant Language Teachers (ALT) in local boards of education.
As an ALT, I worked in 5 schools in a rural village of 4,500 people. As a leader in the local JET Association, I organized events and maintained a Drupal installation that let 100+ ALTs in the same prefecture connect, share classroom best practice and support one another online.
Peace Corps August 2005 - 2007: Parakou, Benin
The Peace Corps is an international service organization of the US government. The stated mission of the Peace Corps includes providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand American culture, and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries.
As a Peace Corps Volunteer I:
recruited and trained 27 people in basic web design, HTML/CSS and content management
trained 5 people in advanced web design, including PHP/MySQL back end design
managed the conception, creation and development of 3 websites
led training and supervised 7 people in computer hardware troubleshooting
developed an antenna fabricated from local materials for broadcasting WiFi over distance
reviewed project proposals (with an ICT component) for feasibility
Andiamo Telecom August 2003 - 2005: San Luis Obispo, California
Andiamo Telecom was a facilities-based domestic and international carrier that provided a range of telecommunication services such as prepaid calling cards and operator services.
As a systems administrator I:
Maintained a network and small data-center comprised of Windows and SCO Unix hosts
Ensured vital network components and servers were available 24/7
Handled all technical elements of launching a remote call center in Tijuana, Mexico
Trained 5 people in VoIP over VPN technique used to transport voice and data to the remote call center
Authored financial reporting system to track real-time sales and revenue statistics
Education
Graduated 2005 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering
Certifications / Awards
President's Club May 2023
Recognized as non-Field VIP for building out 24/7 Support for US Government product, unlocking additional sales opportunities and enabling customers with 24/7 support requirements.
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) November 2019 · Expired November 2022
License CKA-1900-004034-0100 · Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)
Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (valid Mar 2017 - Mar 2019)
License LFCE-1700-0289-0200
Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator (valid Mar 2017 - Mar 2019)
License LFCS-1600-0855-0100
Spoken Language Proficiency
English
Native speaker
ភាសាខ្មែរ (Khmer/Cambodian) Studied 2009-present
I can read, write and type Khmer script. 8 years of experience using Khmer (in Cambodia) as a primary spoken language.
日本語 (Japanese) Studied 2000,2007-2009
I can speak, read, write and type basic Japanese. 2 years of using experience using Japanese (in Japan) as primary spoken language.
Français (French) Studied 2005-2007
I can speak, read and write French. 2 years of experience using French (in Benin, West Africa) as primary spoken language.
Español (Spanish) Studied 1995-2000
I can speak, read and write Spanish. 4 years of using Spanish in a business setting for Customer Service.
Volunteer Experience
Tearfund Canada September 2021 – Present
Board Member
Tearfund Canada partners with local organizations to address poverty and injustice globally, with a focus on economic empowerment. Serving on the board in a governance and advisory capacity.
New Hope Community Services January 2018 – February 2025
Live-In Volunteer Resident Assistant
My family and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment alongside newcomer refugee families as part of a community-living model. Day to day this meant being good neighbors — building community, practicing hospitality (giving and receiving), and helping with small acts to ease the transition into Canada and toward permanent housing.
Tekhin January 2013 – December 2018
Conference Organizer
An annual tech-integration conference for educators in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, bringing together teachers, IT staff, and tech integrators to share classroom best practices and new ideas. Typical attendance 100–150 people.