Systems Engineering Manager

Mixpeek; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Modal is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team of experienced engineers. This hands-on leadership role blends technical contribution with people management to drive high‑impact systems work in distributed computing and data handling.

You’ll help set direction, remove blockers, and foster a strong engineering culture, collaborating across teams to deliver scalable infrastructure and performance optimizations.

Qualifications

• At least 10 years of industry experience, including 3 years in a leadership role.
• Experience building high-performance distributed systems at large scale.
• Strong background in cloud infrastructure.
• Strong knowledge of low-level operating system foundations (Linux kernel, file systems, containers).
• Proficient in systems-level languages such as Rust, C, C++, or Java.

Responsibilities

• Lead a group of engineers as an Engineering Manager with hands-on technical contribution and people management.
• Set direction, remove blockers, and foster a strong engineering culture.
• Tackle complex systems challenges in distributed computing, large-scale data handling, and performance optimization.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

Linux kernel

Containers

Rust

C

C++

Java

Leadership

Technical depth

Job description

About Us:

AI needs a new infrastructure layer. We're building it at Modal.

Every era of computing brought new workloads that previous infrastructure couldn't support: mainframes, databases, and the cloud. Each time, the company that rebuilt the layer underneath defined the decade. AI is no different, except it touches everything instead of one slice, and the window to build the layer underneath it is open right now.

Our customers include category-defining companies like Lovable, Ramp, Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. They rely on Modal for instant GPU access, sub‑second container starts, and native storage, so it's simple to serve low‑latency inference, fine‑tune models, and access production‑ready sandboxes at scale.

We recently raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint Ventures. We've crossed $300M+ ARR and grown fivefold since September.

Our team includes creators of popular open‑source projects (e.g.,Seaborn,Luigi), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience.

The Role:

We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a group of highly experienced engineers. This is a hands‑on leadership role where you’ll spend roughly half your time on technical contribution and half on people management, depending on the need. You’ll work closely with the team to set direction, remove blockers, and foster a strong engineering culture as they tackle complex systems challenges in distributed computing, large‑scale data handling, and performance optimization.

Who You Are:

We think you are an experienced engineering leader who thrives close to the work and enjoys building alongside their team when needed. You earn trust through technical depth, communicate with clarity, and help great engineers move fast and make sound decisions. You thrive in a fast paced environment, you are pragmatic, calm under pressure, and focused on impact.

Requirements:

• At least 10 years of industry experience, including 3 years experience in a leadership role
• Experience building high‑performance distributed systems at a large scale
• Strong background in cloud infrastructure
• Strong knowledge of low‑level operating system foundations (Linux kernel, file systems, containers, etc.)
• Proficient in systems‑level languages such as Rust, C, C++, or Java