Brian Wald

I'm a builder who ended up in strategy. I started as a software engineer, spent years in DevOps and platform work, and still believe that how software gets built matters. But after working with hundreds of engineering organizations, I started to see that the teams, leaders, and systems built to support them are a massive part of the equation, and most organizations only understand one side of it.

As Global Field CTO at GitLab, I spend most of my time inside large engineering organizations, the kind with hundreds of teams, years of accumulated tooling decisions, and real pressure to figure out what AI changes for them. The conversations are fast and the problems repeat in ways most people never get to see.

I write here to process what I'm seeing: where the gap is between what the industry talks about and what actually works inside these organizations. If you build software, lead engineering teams, or make technology decisions at scale, some of it might be useful.

I also cook, sail, and tinker with robotics, and occasionally write about whatever else holds my attention.

Available for speaking engagements, advisory roles, and consulting. Let's talk.