Senior Engineering Manager, Platform

Forma; California; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first working environment

Medical, dental and vision insurance

Employee wellness program

One-time home office stipend

401(k) savings plan

Flexible PTO policy

12 weeks Parental Leave + 4 additional

Job summary

Forma is seeking a Senior Manager for the Platform team to lead backend services powering the benefits platform. You will own architecture, reliability, and scalability while driving end-to-end ownership and operational excellence across product teams.

You will shape how the team builds—driving AI-assisted development with rigorous guardrails, collaboration with Product, Security, and other engineering groups, and fostering a high-performance, inclusive culture.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience directly managing software engineers.
• 10+ years of experience developing backend software applications.
• Strong background in distributed systems, APIs, and service-oriented architecture.
• Experience owning platform reliability—SLAs/SLOs, incident management, observability, and on-call practices.
• Hands-on experience guiding AI-assisted code development with quality and security controls.

Responsibilities

• Own the product strategy and roadmap for backend platform services, balancing scalability, reliability, security, with business outcomes.
• Translate platform strategy into quarterly OKRs and oversee delivery across the team.
• Champion engineering excellence with best practices in design, testing, and deployment for services.
• Partner with other teams to define platform APIs and shared services supporting velocity.
• Manage and grow a backend engineering team with performance feedback, hiring, and inclusive culture.
• Build a high-trust environment, mentoring engineers in problem framing, debugging, and architectural judgment.
• Own the operational model for platform reliability, uptime, incident response, and on-call processes.
• Develop and track health metrics to drive continuous improvement of enterprise infrastructure.

Skills

People management

Backend development

Distributed systems

API design

SOA design

Platform reliability

Incident management

Observability

On-call

Hiring coaching

AI-assisted coding

Collaboration

Cross-functional partnering

Fintech experience

Job description

About Forma

The employee benefits landscape needs a reset. Companies invest millions annually in benefits that employees neither value nor use regularly. Forma, founded in 2017, set out to challenge this one-size-fits-all approach.

About Forma

The employee benefits landscape needs a reset. Companies invest millions annually in benefits that employees neither value nor use regularly. Forma, founded in 2017, set out to challenge this one-size-fits-all approach.

Forma's global lifestyle benefits platform enables companies to offer competitive packages while reducing costs and inefficiencies. While giving employees more choice and flexibility in spending their benefit allowances, the Forma platform saves HR, total rewards, and benefits professionals countless hours they would have spent managing and supporting multiple point solutions.

With Forma, companies can choose from a suite of products, including Lifestyle Spending Accounts, Health Savings Accounts, Health Reimbursement Arrangements, Flexible Spending Accounts, and more. These products allow companies to design and deliver customized benefits programs through a single platform. Employees can then spend account funds in three ways: The Forma Store, The Forma Visa Card, or claim reimbursement.

Forma has helped hundreds of renowned companies, including Stripe, UKG, lululemon, and Tripadvisor, to design equitable, scalable, and flexible benefits programs for nearly 1 million employees worldwide.

Forma is backed by Emergence Capital and Ribbit Capital. We have received numerous awards for our exponential growth, innovation, and as a "Great Place to Work".

About The Role

As Senior Manager on the Platform side at Forma, you'll lead the backend team responsible for the core systems that power our entire benefits platform. Your team owns the reliability, scalability, and performance of the backend systems that every product and customer-facing team builds on. Under your leadership, the team will drive end-to-end ownership of these services from architecture through deployment and operational excellence. You'll work closely with Engineering leadership, Product Management, Security, Customer Operations and other engineering teams to ensure our platform can scale reliably as we grow.

You'll also shape how the team builds, not just what it builds — AI-assisted development is changing the volume and shape of code flowing into our systems, and Platform owns the guardrails that keep that change safe.

You Will

• Product Strategy & Executive Communication
  
  
  
  • Own the product strategy and roadmap for backend platform services, balancing scalability, reliability, security, with business outcomes across the org.
  
  
  • Translate platform strategy into a practical execution plan with quarterly OKRs, and hold the team accountable to delivery.
  
  
  
  


• Technical Strategy & Judgment
  
  
  
  • Champion engineering excellence — driving best practices in system design, code quality, testing, and operational readiness across services, including an explicit bar for how AI-assisted code is specified, reviewed, and verified before it reaches production.
  
  
  • Partner cross-functionally with other engineering teams to define platform APIs, shared services, and infrastructure that support company-wide product velocity.
  
  
  
  


• Manager Effectiveness
  
  
  
  • Manage and grow a team of backend engineers, providing performance feedback, hiring, and fostering a diverse, collaborative, and inclusive team culture.
  
  
  • Build trust and a strong engineering culture, coaching engineers toward technical and career growth, including deliberate investment in the skills AI doesn't replace: problem framing, debugging from first principles, and architectural judgment.
  
  
  
  


• Delivery & Organizational Effectiveness
  
  
  
  • Own the operational model for platform reliability: uptime, incident response, on-call processes, and postmortems, ensuring the platform meets the performance and availability bar the business needs.
  
  
  • Develop and track engineering and platform health metrics to drive continuous improvement toward world-class enterprise infrastructure.
  
  
  • Set up processes to handle ad hoc infrastructure and support needs without disrupting the team's execution cadence.
  
  
  
  

Preferred Skills

• 5+ years of experience directly managing software engineers, including experience managing a platform, infrastructure, or backend systems team.


• 10+ years of experience developing backend software applications, with deep expertise in distributed systems, APIs, and service-oriented architecture.


• Proven track record of building and scaling large-scale, complex distributed systems in a production environment.


• Experience owning platform reliability — SLAs/SLOs, incident management, observability, and on-call practices.


• Experience developing engineering talent and helping them achieve their personal and professional goals through hiring, coaching, and performance management.


• Ability to foster a collaborative environment through strong partnerships with Product, Security, and other Engineering teams.


• Proven success driving technical strategy and innovation in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment.


• Hands-on experience building with AI-assisted development tools, and a clear point of view on where they help, where they don't, and how to hold quality and security standards as output scales.


• Fintech experience would be a plus.

Benefits and Perks

• Remote-first working environment


• Medical, dental and vision insurance plans


• Employee wellness program


• One-time home office stipend


• 401(k) savings plan


• Flexible PTO policy


• 12 weeks Parental Leave + 4 additional weeks for the Birthing Parent

At Forma, we value diversity, and always treat all employees and job applicants based on merit, qualifications, competence, and talent. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Duties and responsibilities may not all be covered in the description, or may change over time at the discretion of Forma. You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. Your skills and passion will stand out—and set you apart—especially if your career has taken some extraordinary twists and turns. At Forma, we welcome diverse perspectives, and people who think rigorously / aren't afraid to challenge assumptions. Join us!