Senior Engineering Manager, Tools and Observability

Engg; San Francisco, Seattle, New York (CA, WA, NY); On-site; USD 260,000 - 420,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

In-office policy

Job summary

Rippling's Infrastructure organization owns foundational systems powering products and millions of users. The Tools and Observability team builds internal developer tooling and observability infrastructure to help engineers develop, operate, and troubleshoot services at scale.

This role leads and grows a team, defines the long-term strategy and roadmap for developer productivity, tooling, and observability, and drives adoption of shared tools while ensuring reliability, scalability, and cost

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software or infrastructure engineering experience.
• 4+ years of engineering management experience.
• Experience leading teams that build internal developer tools, shared engineering platforms, or observability infrastructure.
• Strong technical depth in distributed systems and cloud-based production environments.
• Experience building or operating logging, metrics, tracing, or error-monitoring systems at scale.
• A strong developer experience mindset with the ability to translate engineering needs into intuitive tools.
• Strong operational judgment, including experience improving production troubleshooting, alerting, and incident response.
• Experience developing senior engineers, Staff Engineers, and Principal Engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team responsible for Rippling’s internal developer tooling and observability infrastructure.
• Define the long-term technical strategy and roadmap for developer productivity, tooling, and observability.
• Build and evolve internal tools and self-service capabilities that simplify how engineers develop, troubleshoot, and operate services.
• Own the reliability, scalability, and usability of logging, metrics, distributed tracing, and error-monitoring systems.
• Partner with engineering teams to understand their needs, prioritize improvements, and drive adoption of shared tools and platforms.
• Establish best practices for instrumentation, actionable alerting, and production debugging.
• Lead initiatives across engineering organizations that improve developer workflows and reduce operational overhead.
• Develop and mentor engineers while maintaining a strong culture of ownership and technical excellence.
• Drive improvements in observability coverage, platform performance, and cost efficiency.

Skills

Team leadership

Distributed systems

Observability tooling

Developer tooling

Job description

About the role Rippling’s Infrastructure organization owns the foundational systems that power every product and service across the company. Supporting more than 1,000 engineers and millions of end users, the Tools and Observability team builds the internal developer tooling and observability infrastructure that help engineers develop, operate, and troubleshoot services at scale.

What you will do

• Lead and grow a team responsible for Rippling’s internal developer tooling and observability infrastructure
• Define the long-term technical strategy and roadmap for developer productivity, tooling, and observability
• Build and evolve internal tools and self-service capabilities that simplify how engineers develop, troubleshoot, and operate services
• Own the reliability, scalability, and usability of logging, metrics, distributed tracing, and error-monitoring systems
• Partner with engineering teams to understand their needs, prioritize improvements, and drive adoption of shared tools and platforms
• Establish best practices for instrumentation, actionable alerting, and production debugging
• Lead initiatives across engineering organizations that improve developer workflows and reduce operational overhead
• Develop and mentor engineers while maintaining a strong culture of ownership and technical excellence
• Drive improvements in observability coverage, platform performance, and cost efficiency

What you will need

• 8+ years of software or infrastructure engineering experience
• 4+ years of engineering management experience
• Experience leading teams that build internal developer tools, shared engineering platforms, or observability infrastructure
• Strong technical depth in distributed systems and cloud-based production environments
• Experience building or operating logging, metrics, tracing, or error-monitoring systems at scale
• A strong developer experience mindset, with the ability to translate engineering needs into intuitive, widely adopted tools
• Strong operational judgment, including experience improving production troubleshooting, alerting, and incident response
• Experience developing senior engineers, Staff Engineers, and Principal Engineers
• Excellent cross-functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to drive initiatives across engineering 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.