Director, Regional Sales - New Business and Commercial Sales, Japan

Director, Regional Sales - New Business (Japan)

An overview of this role

As the Director, Regional Sales - New Business, you'll build and lead a dedicated function focused on driving new logo growth across Japan. You'll report to the Director of APJ for New Business and will hire, develop, and coach a high-performing team of Account Executives to win first-order deals across more than 24,000 in-ICP accounts, from whitespace to existing installs, with an average deal size up to 25,000. You'll define and execute a scalable sales strategy for a fast-moving, high-volume territory. You'll use tools like Salesforce, Clari, Gong, and Outreach to build predictable pipeline, shorten deal cycles to 6 months or less, and consistently meet or exceed new business goals. It's a rare opportunity to help shape, operationalize, and scale a sales motion focused on new business in a growing, high-impact market while you collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to bring GitLab's DevSecOps platform to new customers across Japan.

What you'll do

• Lead a distributed team of Account Executives across Japan focused on winning new logos and driving first-order revenue.
• Develop and execute a scalable new business sales strategy for Japan, covering both installed base and whitespace accounts within our ideal customer profile.
• Drive consistent pipeline generation and deal progression across a high volume of target accounts, with an emphasis on predictable new logo performance and efficient deal cycles.
• Collaborate closely with marketing, sales operations, and enablement to design and optimize motions, campaigns, and processes that support new business growth.
• Use CRM and sales enablement tools such as Salesforce, Clari, Gong, and Outreach to inspect pipeline, forecast accurately, and coach your team based on data-driven insights.
• Hire, onboard, and develop a high-performing sales team, providing regular coaching on territory planning, opportunity management, negotiation, and deal structure.
• Partner with regional and global sales leadership to help define, refine, and scale this sales function, sharing learnings and best practices across teams.
• Represent GitLab and our open source, DevSecOps, and SaaS offerings with executive-level stakeholders in Japan, reinforcing our value proposition and long-term partnerships.

What you'll bring

• Proven success leading high-performing field sales teams within open source, DevOps, or SaaS environments, with a focus on new logo acquisition and net new revenue.
• Experience building, coaching, and developing Account Executives to consistently create pipeline, progress opportunities, and close new business across Japan.
• Demonstrated ability to design and execute scalable sales strategies for a large, mixed account base (installed customers and whitespace) across the Japanese market.
• Proficiency using CRM and sales enablement tools such as Salesforce, Clari, Gong, or Outreach to forecast accurately, manage pipelines, and drive operational discipline.
• Strong relationship-building, negotiation, and deal-structuring skills, including experience engaging and presenting to executive-level stakeholders.
• Background managing distributed teams in Japan, with an understanding of local business culture and go-to-market dynamics.
• Ability to exercise sound judgment and adapt quickly in a fast-paced, evolving environment, balancing strategic planning with hands-on deal support.
• Openness to candidates with diverse, transferable leadership and sales experience who can demonstrate success driving new business in complex B2B environments.

About the team

The Regional Sales New Business team at GitLab focuses on acquiring new logos and accelerating first-order revenue across Japan. We work closely with the Director of APJ for New Business and other sales, marketing, and operations partners. As an all-remote, distributed team based across Japan, we collaborate asynchronously. We prioritize the highest-potential accounts within a large ideal customer profile, build scalable processes, and refine a repeatable new business motion. As a growing function, we are focused on defining our operating model, hiring and developing Account Executives, and establishing the structure, tools, and best practices needed to build and scale a high-performing new business engine for GitLab in Japan.