Senior Engineering Manager, Platform
Required skills
- platform
- cloud infrastructure
- production platform
- Kubernetes
- system design
- data modeling
- APIs
- scalable service architecture
- shared platforms
- infrastructure automation
Nice to have
- distributed systems
- cross-functional leadership
- communication skills
Role summary
Rippling is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead a team responsible for its core cloud infrastructure and production platform. This role involves defining long-term strategy for scalability, reliability, and operational excellence, owning Kubernetes platform architecture, and driving infrastructure automation. The ideal candidate will have 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in engineering management, with strong technical depth in system design, data modeling, APIs, and scalable service architecture. Responsibilities include mentoring engineers, leading large-scale initiatives, and improving cost efficiency and capacity planning.
About the role
Rippling brings together the systems businesses use to manage their people, payroll, and operations. Behind that experience is a platform that allows teams to model complex data, connect it across products, and build applications that adapt to how each business works.
We’re looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to help shape that foundation. You’ll lead engineers working on capabilities that many teams depend on, from shared data and query systems to the tools used to build and customize applications. This is a role for someone who enjoys turning hard technical problems into simple, reliable building blocks—and helping a strong team do the best work of their careers.
What you will do
- Lead and grow a team responsible for Rippling's core cloud infrastructure and production platform
- Define the long-term strategy for infrastructure scalability, reliability, and operational excellence
- Own Kubernetes platform architecture, cluster management, and production infrastructure lifecycle
- Drive infrastructure automation through Infrastructure as Code and platform self-service capabilities
- Establish best practices around observability, monitoring, incident response, and disaster recovery
- Partner with engineering teams to improve system reliability, deployment safety, and operational efficiency
- Lead large-scale infrastructure initiatives spanning multiple engineering organizations
- Develop and mentor engineers while maintaining a strong culture of ownership and technical excellence
- Drive improvements in cost efficiency, capacity planning, and cloud resource management
What you will need
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant work on platform, data, backend, or distributed systems.
- 4+ years of engineering management experience leading teams that build and operate production systems.
- Strong technical depth in system design, data modeling, APIs, and scalable service architecture.
- Experience building shared platforms or infrastructure adopted by multiple products or engineering teams.
- The ability to engage deeply in technical design, evaluate tradeoffs, and guide engineers through difficult implementation decisions.
- Experience leading systems through growth, including changes to performance, reliability, and data architecture.
- A track record of developing senior engineers and helping them grow into broader technical leadership.
- Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to bring clarity to ambiguous, high-impact problems.
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 accommodations@rippling.com
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.
Sample Rippling interview questions
- 1
Design a Reservation System for Airbnb
system designhard - 2
Merge a New Interval Merge a new interval into a list of non-overlapping intervals. Input: intervals = [[1,2],[3,5],[6,7],[8,10],[12,16]], newInterval = [4,8] Output: [[1,2],[3,10],[12,16]] Explanation: The new interval overlaps with [3,5], [6,7], and [8,10], merging them all into the unified block [3,10].
codingmedium - 3
Valid Word Abbreviation Determine if a string matches a valid word abbreviation. Input: word = "apple", abbr = "a2e" Output: FALSE Explanation: The abbreviation claims exactly 2 characters are skipped between 'a' and 'e', but "ppl" is actually 3 characters long.
codingmedium - 4
Clone an Undirected Graph Clone an undirected graph. Input: adjList = [[]] Output: [[]] Explanation: Creates a new, deeply cloned graph containing only one single node with zero connected neighbors.
codingmedium - 5
Split Array into Consecutive Subsequences Split an array into consecutive subsequences. Input: nums = [1,2,3,4,4,5] Output: FALSE Explanation: The numbers can form [1,2,3,4], but the remaining leftover group [4,5] is too short to form a valid sequence of length 3.
codingmedium
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