Senior Engineering Manager, AI Platform

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a critical AI Platform Infrastructure team. You will oversee core systems that keep AI products reliable and scalable, partnering with engineering leaders to shape the future of AI at Rippling.

You will mentor engineers, drive platform strategy, and deliver memory systems, evaluation frameworks, and execution environments to support hundreds of AI-powered workflows and experiences.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with large-scale distributed systems or platform infrastructure.
• 2+ years of engineering management experience leading teams delivering complex projects.
• Proven ability to lead engineers through ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Strong systems design and architecture across scalable backend platforms.
• Experience operating production services with reliability, performance, and observability requirements.
• Ability to drive cross-functional initiatives and influence multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of engineers for the foundational AI platform powering Rippling AI.
• Own infrastructure areas: retrieval systems, search, reasoning, AI execution environments, observability.
• Improve latency, quality, scalability, and developer productivity across the AI platform.
• Build platform capabilities enabling teams to develop AI-powered products, agents, and automations.
• Define platform strategy with product and engineering leaders and prioritize investments.
• Lead large-scale initiatives in memory, automated tuning, evaluation, reporting, and AI optimization.

Skills

Distributed systems

Platform engineering

Leadership

Systems design

Performance and observability

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

About the role

Rippling AI is becoming a foundational platform across the company, powering everything from intelligent agents and automations to dashboards, and next-generation product experiences. As we rapidly scale adoption, we\'re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a critical AI Platform Infrastructure team responsible for the core systems that make AI products reliable, performant, and scalable.

This team sits at the intersection of platform engineering, AI infrastructure, developer experience, and product innovation. You\'ll lead a small, high-impact team building the underlying infrastructure that powers AI across Rippling—from retrieval systems and reasoning loops to observability, memory, tooling, and execution environments.

This is not a traditional ML Infrastructure role. While familiarity with machine learning systems is valuable, the focus is on building production-grade AI platforms and developer infrastructure that enable hundreds of engineers and AI-powered products across Rippling.

You\'ll partner closely with engineering leaders, product leadership, and AI researchers to define the future of AI at Rippling while helping scale one of the company\'s fastest-growing product areas.

What you will do

• Lead and grow a team of engineers responsible for the foundational AI platform powering Rippling AI.


• Own critical infrastructure areas including retrieval systems, search, reasoning frameworks, AI execution environments, observability, performance, and reliability.


• Drive improvements in latency, quality, scalability, and developer productivity across the AI platform.


• Build and evolve the platform capabilities that enable teams across Rippling to develop AI-powered products, agents, and automations.


• Partner with product and engineering leaders to define platform strategy and prioritize investments that unlock the next generation of AI experiences.


• Lead large-scale initiatives across areas such as memory systems, automated tuning, evaluation frameworks, reporting, and AI performance optimization.


• Develop safe, scalable execution environments for AI-powered workflows, including code execution, document generation, and other agent capabilities.


• Collaborate with teams building customer-facing AI products while ensuring the underlying platform can support rapid growth and evolving use cases.


• Recruit, mentor, and develop exceptional engineers while fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and velocity


• Help shape the long-term architecture of Rippling\'s AI ecosystem as the company scales toward hundreds of AI-powered workflows and experiences.

What you will need

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience building large-scale distributed systems or platform infrastructure.


• 2+ years of engineering management experience leading teams delivering complex technical projects.


• Track record of leading engineers through highly ambiguous, fast-moving technical environments.


• Strong systems design and architecture experience across scalable backend platforms, infrastructure, or developer platforms.


• Experience building and operating production services with demanding requirements around reliability, performance, and observability.


• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and influence technical direction across multiple teams.

Additional Information

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected characteristics, Rippling is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need assistance during the hiring process. To request a reasonable accommodation, please email [e-mail]

Rippling highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. For office-based employees (employees who live within a defined radius of a Rippling office), Rippling considers working in the office, at least three days a week under current policy, to be an essential function of the employee\'s role.

This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. The salary for US-based employees will be aligned with one of the ranges below based on location; see which tier applies to your location here.

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone\'s compensation–including a candidate\'s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed below.