Senior Manager, Software Engineering - AI Engineering & Operations

Senior Engineering Manager

At Schwab, you're empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us "challenge the status quo" and transform the finance industry together.

We believe in the importance of in-office collaboration and fully intend for the selected candidate for this role to work on site in the specified location(s). This role is expected to be in the office 4 days a week.

Schwab's AI Engineering & Operations team is responsible for building the next generation Generative AI solutions that shape the future of technology at Schwab. Engineers collaborate across teams to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performing AI systems that align with Schwab's innovation strategy and operational goals. Additionally, the AI products this team delivers are instrumental in driving data-informed business decisions and elevating client experiences.

We're seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead/manage a team of engineers who will design and deliver production-grade GenAI applications, enhancing the client journey and driving tangible business value. The ideal candidate will have experience as an engineering leader who has personally built and operated cloud-based systems at scale and now lead teams through technical depth. This role requires deep technical credibility and the ability to design, review, and challenge complex system architectures. You will be expected to whiteboard, review designs, and coach senior engineers on production‑grade systems.

In this pivotal role, you'll help shape the next era of AI at Schwab by advancing engineering standards and solving complex, real‑world challenges. You'll lead teams through rapid iterations—from concept to production—while fostering a culture of curiosity, creativity, and continuous learning.

With a strong emphasis on site reliability, monitoring, observability, and operations, you'll ensure the AI systems and data pipelines your team builds are resilient, well‑monitored, and ready to support mission‑critical use cases. Your work will directly impact system performance, reliability, and customer trust at scale.

At Schwab, you'll collaborate with talented engineers and partners who value integrity, inclusion, and shared success—while growing your own leadership and technical impact along the way.

What You'll Do:

• Lead and manage a team of highly skilled software engineers responsible for designing, building, and operating production‑grade GenAI applications that deliver measurable business and client impact.
• Serve as a hands‑on technical leader, actively guiding architecture decisions, reviewing designs, and coaching engineers on building scalable, reliable, and maintainable systems.
• Own engineering outcomes end‑to‑end—from technical design and implementation through deployment, monitoring, incident response, and ongoing optimization.
• Drive cloud‑first, cloud‑native engineering practices, including containerization, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and automation across development and operations.
• Champion site reliability engineering principles, ensuring systems are observable, resilient, well‑monitored, and capable of supporting mission‑critical workloads at scale.
• Partner closely with product, data, security, and platform teams to translate business needs into technically sound, high‑quality solutions.
• Establish and uphold engineering standards focused on code quality, operational readiness, security, and long‑term sustainability.
• Lead teams through ambiguity and rapid iteration, making informed tradeoffs while maintaining high technical and reliability standards.
• Mentor and develop engineers through code reviews, technical feedback, career coaching, and performance management, building strong engineering depth across the team.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly and concisely to senior leadership and cross‑functional stakeholders, including risks, dependencies, and architectural decisions.

What You Have

To ensure that we fulfill our promise of "challenging the status quo," this role has specific qualifications that successful candidates should have:

• 5+ years of direct people leadership experience managing and developing software engineering teams, including hiring, performance management, and career development.
• Demonstrated experience leading teams that have built and operated systems at scale with measurable reliability and performance outcomes.
• 8+ years of hands‑on software engineering experience, including at least 4+ years operating as a senior‑level engineer designing and building complex systems.
• Proven experience leading teams that have built, deployed, and supported production systems, with direct accountability for reliability, performance, and operational health.
• 5+ years of experience with cloud‑native technologies, including containerized applications and operating systems in the public cloud using infrastructure as code and tools such as: Kubernetes, CI/CD, IaC, SRE‑style operations, observability tooling.
• Demonstrated depth in system design and architecture, with the ability to explain how systems scale, handle failure, and meet availability and performance requirements.
• Experience directly reviewing and approving architecture and technical designs.
• Strong experience with monitoring, observability, incident management, and operational readiness, ideally in environments supporting critical business workflows.
• Ability to review, challenge, and approve technical designs, and provide practical guidance to senior and staff‑level engineers.
• Clear, concise communication skills with the ability to translate technical concepts for engineering peers, business partners, and executive audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize competing demands, make informed tradeoffs, and drive execution without sacrificing technical quality.
• A track record of influencing through technical credibility, collaboration, and leadership presence in complex organizations.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Deep experience designing and evolving distributed, cloud‑native architectures, with clear ownership of system scalability, availability, and fault tolerance.
• Demonstrated success leading teams that architected, built, and operated systems in the public cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure) using modern DevOps and SRE practices.
• Strong understanding of container orchestration, service‑based architectures, and cloud infrastructure patterns.
• Hands‑on experience establishing or maturing observability practices, including metrics, logging, tracing, alerting, and incident response.
• Proven ability to evaluate architectural tradeoffs and make informed decisions balancing reliability, performance, security, and cost.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers through system design reviews, architecture discussions, and technical problem‑solving.
• Comfort operating in high‑scale, production environments where uptime, resiliency, and operational discipline are critical.
• Clear technical communication skills, including the ability to explain architecture, risks, and dependencies to engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.
• Curiosity and practical experience with emerging technologies, including applied AI/ML systems, paired with a disciplined approach to production readiness.
• Strong computer science fundamentals; advanced degree or equivalent practical experience is a plus.

In addition to the salary range, this role is also eligible for bonus or incentive opportunities.

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis without employer sponsorship.