The GitLab Foundation’s compensation approach is designed to attract, motivate, and retain talented team members who drive the Foundation’s success and uphold our organizational values. Recognizing the need for top-tier talent, we strive to provide a base salary that exceeds the market when team members are fully proficient and meeting expectations. In addition to base salary, the organization offers a comprehensive benefits package that reflects our commitment to the well-being of our team members and their families.

Our compensation process is intended to be fair and straightforward, ensuring that all team members and managers understand our goals:

1. Attract and Retain Talent: Offer competitive salaries to attract and keep high-performing team members committed to the Foundation’s mission.
2. Reward Performance: Implement a performance-based compensation system that recognizes and rewards team members’ contributions to the Foundation.
3. Ensure Financial Sustainability: Develop a pay structure that aligns with the Foundation’s financial health and long-term sustainability.

Guiding Principles

1. **Best Talent Focus:** We hire the best candidates possible and base our initial compensation offers on candidate skills and experience. We aim to be competitive with the market to recruit and retain high-quality team members.
2. **Market Alignment:** To account for differences in cost of living, we align compensation to the labor cost in each team member’s local market.
3. **Performance-Based Pay:** We believe compensation should be designed to incentivize results, and that outstanding performance deserves great rewards. Salary increases and other incentives are based on performance against organizational and individual goals, assessed annually.
4. **Pay Equity:** All team members should be similarly compensated for their performance, regardless of gender, race, or background. We review organizational compensation data annually to ensure we adhere to this principle.
5. **Total Rewards Transparency:** We take a holistic approach to compensation, encompassing all tools used to attract, motivate, and retain team members. In compensation discussions, we make visible the complete set of rewards that team members receive.

Best Talent Focus

We focus on hiring the best candidates and base our initial compensation offers on candidate skills and experience. We aim to be competitive with the market to recruit and retain high-quality team members. We benchmark against aligned nonprofit sector roles using market data from [Payscale](https://www.payscale.com/en-eu/why-payscale/#:~:text=Payscale technology is built so,many of the enterprise features.).

Transparency of Compensation Ranges

Team members can see where they fall within the compensation range for their role in their location and nationally and can email the Chief Operating Officer to obtain this information (it will also be shared annually with individual team members and their managers when Total Rewards Statements are made available during the Annual Compensation Review cycle). It is rare for a team member to be at the top of the range, as this would leave little to no room for salary growth. Generally:

1. New or less proficient team members: Pay will typically be close to the midpoint for their local market.
2. Proficient team members and high performers: Team members rated Successful or Exemplary will be compensated above or well above the midpoint market rate.

Please review how we manage performance at the Foundation for more information on how compensation is linked to performance.

Hiring

At the GitLab Foundation, posted hiring ranges on our job descriptions are typically narrower than the entire market range. New hires generally are placed close to the midpoint of the national range. This approach provides room for performance-based salary growth and allows us to manage resources effectively while maintaining equity in compensation practices across the organization. During the following compensation review, team members will be aligned with their local market rate.