The Midship Podcast: Danielle Ritter on Scaling Audit for Growth and Innovation
“Audit isn’t just about finding risks, it’s about helping the business move faster because we’ve built the right controls in from the start.”
Oct 22, 2025
On this episode of The Midship Podcast, we sit down with Danielle Ritter, VP of Internal Audit at GitLab, to talk about what it really takes to build scalable, tech-forward audit functions in high-growth companies.
From her time helping guide Instacart through its IPO to now leading audit at GitLab, Danielle shares an inside look at how teams can shift from being compliance gatekeepers to trusted advisors embedded in the business.
“It has to start from both the top down and the bottom up — the CEO and CTO have to believe in building with controls in mind, but it’s just as important to educate the people designing the systems.”
She also dives into the rise of continuous monitoring and why real-time insight is changing the game:
“If you’re testing controls six months after a transaction, that risk could still exist the whole time. Continuous monitoring lets you catch issues as they happen.”
The conversation covers everything from attracting the next generation of audit talent to the evolving relationship between engineering and audit — and why today’s auditors need to be as curious about technology as they are about risk.
Watch the full conversation to hear how forward-thinking teams are redefining what audit can be.