Platform Engineering Lead — Documents & AI Workflows

Rippling; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 345,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Documents Platform team in Seattle, overseeing a foundational backend platform for document-centric experiences used by product teams, AI workflows, and external developers.

The role combines people leadership with deep technical judgment, focusing on APIs, data models, and distributed systems while enabling teams to move quickly through clear abstractions and platform interfaces.

Qualifications

• Significant engineering leadership experience managing backend or platform teams.
• Strong backend fundamentals with architecture and system design participation.
• Experience building and operating large-scale platforms or core backend systems.
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems, databases, data models, and APIs.
• Ability to design abstractions and reusable platform capabilities.
• Track record leading technically complex cross-functional initiatives.
• Judgment on scalability, reliability, API design, and long-term tradeoffs.
• Ability to switch between technical strategy and hands-on leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a backend/platform engineering team for the Documents Platform.
• Define vision, architecture, and roadmap for document capabilities as a reusable platform primitive.
• Build scalable APIs and backend services for internal product teams, AI workflows, and external developers.
• Evolve document infrastructure into a generalized platform across Rippling.
• Own complex technical decisions across distributed systems, data models, and APIs.
• Stay involved in design and architecture while enabling engineers to execute independently.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate requirements into platform capabilities.
• Establish abstractions and interfaces for rapid development without rebuilding underlying infrastructure.
• Build for long-term scale, reliability, and developer experience as adoption grows.
• Hire, coach, and develop a high-performing engineering team with high standards.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Architecture design

People management

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Rippling is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Documents Platform team in Seattle, overseeing a foundational backend platform for document-centric experiences used by product teams, AI workflows, and external developers.

The role combines people leadership with deep technical judgment, focusing on APIs, data models, and distributed systems while enabling teams to move quickly through clear abstractions and platform interfaces.