Rippling

Senior Engineering Manager, Tools and Observability

Rippling • $207K — $345K *
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years in software or infrastructure engineering
  • 4+ years in engineering management
  • Experience with internal developer tools and observability infrastructure
  • Strong knowledge in distributed systems and cloud-based environments
  • Proven track record in building logging, metrics, tracing, and error-monitoring systems
  • Developer experience mindset for creating intuitive tools
  • Operational judgment in production troubleshooting and incident response
  • Experience mentoring senior engineers and leaders

Responsibilities

  • Lead and grow the team for internal developer tooling and observability
  • Define the technical strategy for developer productivity and tooling
  • Build and evolve self-service capabilities for engineers
  • Ensure the reliability and usability of monitoring systems
  • Partner with teams to identify workflow improvements
  • Establish best practices for alerting and debugging
  • Drive enhancements in developer workflows to reduce overhead
  • Mentor engineers to foster a culture of excellence

Benefits

  • Collaborative in-office work environment
  • Opportunity for professional growth and mentorship
  • Participation in equity programs
  • Access to a competitive benefits package
Full 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.

As a Senior Engineering Manager, you will lead the team responsible for improving developer productivity and providing visibility into the health of Rippling's production systems. This includes internal tooling, platform self-service capabilities, and the logging, metrics, tracing, and error-monitoring infrastructure engineers rely on to understand system behavior and debug production issues.

You will partner closely with engineering teams across the organization to identify friction in their workflows, build reliable and intuitive tools, and make it easier to deliver and operate high-quality software as Rippling continues to 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 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.

The pay range for this role is:

207,000 - 345,000 USD per year (US San Francisco Bay Area)

About Rippling

Rippling is a technology company that provides a platform for managing human resources. The company's platform includes tools for onboarding new employees, managing payroll and benefits, and tracking time off. Rippling was founded in 2017 by Parker Conrad, who previously founded Zenefits. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Learn more about Rippling
Size
200 employees
Industry
Founded
2017

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