Engineering Manager, Automation and Service Reliability

Stanford University; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Stanford University in Palo Alto seeks an Engineering Manager, Automation & Service Reliability to lead a four-engineer team and oversee integration platforms, RPA, and data services within IT Infrastructure. This hybrid technical working manager role combines hands-on project contribution with people leadership, including coaching, performance reviews, and hiring.

The role drives architecture, incident response, and a roadmap for agentic AI, partnering with university IT stakeholders and health

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree plus five years of relevant work experience
• Strong customer relationship skills and ability to collaborate across a diverse environment
• Demonstrated ability to lead, motivate, and develop staff
• Experience with IT Infrastructure, automation, and AI initiatives

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of engineers including training, goal-setting, performance reviews, and individual development plans
• Guide architecture and design decisions across AI solutions, Mulesoft integrations, UiPath automations, Oracle APEX apps, and data pipelines
• Own service reliability for production systems including incident response and root-cause analysis
• Establish and maintain intake processes for automation requests and prioritize backlog against initiatives
• Collaborate with IT stakeholders and healthcare partners and communicate roadmaps clearly

Skills

People leadership

Performance management

Hiring

Career development

System architecture

Incident response

Code review

Automation platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree

5 years relevant experience

Tools

Mulesoft

UiPath

Oracle APEX

Job description

Please Note: This role is based at the Stanford Historic Campus, Pine Hall.

The Engineering Manager, Automation & Service Reliability leads a team of four engineers who design, build, and support the integration platforms, robotic process automation (RPA), and data services for Stanford University's IT Infrastructure team. This is a hybrid technical working manager and people leadership role. The manager actively contributes to technical projects, sets technical direction, and reviews engineering work while also leading the team's day-to-day people management, including coaching, performance management, hiring, and career development. The manager partners closely with the Director of Communications Technologies Service Support and represents the team with internal University IT stakeholders and healthcare partners including Stanford Health Care (SHC) and Stanford Medicine Children's Health (SCH).

This role also carries a forward-looking mandate: evolve the team's automation practice beyond traditional RPA and integration work toward agentic AI. The manager will identify, pilot, and scale agentic AI solutions — AI agents and LLM-powered workflows that can reason, plan, and take multi-step action across existing systems — to solve problems for clients across the broader IT Infrastructure organization, not just the team's existing service lines.

Key Responsibilities

People Management

• Lead, manage and grow a team of one Technical Lead and three Software Engineers including training, goal-setting, performance reviews, and individual development plans.
• Recruit, hire, onboard, and mentor engineering talent; build a culture of technical excellence and accountability.
• Balance workload across the team, manage on-call/support coverage, and resolve interpersonal or performance issues.

Technical Leadership

• Guide architecture and design decisions across AI solutions, Mulesoft integrations, UiPath automations, Oracle APEX applications, and data pipelines.
• Review code and designs at a level sufficient to ensure reliability, security, and maintainability, without necessarily being the primary hands-on developer.
• Own service reliability for production systems (SIPdb, TDC, data feeds) including incident response, root-cause analysis, and preventive engineering.
• Establish and maintain an intake process for new automation requests, prioritizing the team's backlog against ServiceNow requests and strategic initiatives.

Agentic AI & Innovation

• Define and drive a roadmap for applying agentic AI — AI agents and LLM-powered workflows capable of multi-step reasoning and action — across the team's existing platforms (Mulesoft, UiPath, Oracle APEX) and newly identified use cases.
• Identify high-value opportunities for agentic AI across the IT Infrastructure organization, working with peer teams to surface pain points suited to AI-driven automation.
• Stand up pilots for agentic AI use cases (e.g., ticket triage and resolution, incident summarization, service desk drafting, data feed and reporting automation) and define success metrics before scaling to production.
• Evaluate AI tooling, platforms, and integration patterns (including LLM APIs and MCP-style tool/agent frameworks), and build organizational guardrails around security, data handling, and responsible use.
• Upskill the team in AI-assisted and agentic development practices, and champion the team's evolution toward an AI-forward automation practice (e.g., an Automation Center of Excellence model).

Stakeholder & Program Collaboration

• Serve as the team's primary technical point of contact for IT Infrastructure, University Campus and Healthcare partners.
• Collaborate with the Director and broader Communications Technologies leadership on change management for next-generation voice and contact center initiatives.
• Communicate roadmap, risk, and status clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Core Duties:

• Lead and manage all business, technical, and education activities(e.g. application development, installing, configuring, and maintainingservers, routers, firewalls, workstations, and networkequipment).
• Exercise full management responsibility for a technical group,including recruiting, hiring, training, developing, evaluating, andsetting priorities. May manage managerial staff.
• Ensure work completion within schedule, budgetary, and designconstraints; make decisions about analysis, design, and testing; solvecomplex technical problems; provide alternative methods for achievinggoals when necessary.
• Provide strategic planning for own work group; may assist higherlevel management in broader scope strategic planning for a large,complex, university-wide function or major initiative.
• Create procedures and guidelines to ensure compliance withuniversity policy and federal and state regulations.
• Develop and manage budgets for projects or work groups.
• May oversee or assist in preparation and submission ofdocumentation, such as proposals, progress reports, or other contractualrequirements.
• Monitor technology trends and evaluate emerging technologies foradoption and implementation.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues to leverage theuniversity/school’s investments in information technology.

Minimum Education and Experience:

Bachelor's degree and five years of relevant work experience, or acombination of education and relevant experience.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Detailed understanding of relevant technical knowledge andproblem resolution.
• Strong customer relationship skills, consensus building skills,and ability to establish effective working relationships in a diverseenvironment.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, motivate, and developstaff.