Senior Engineering Manager, Tools and Observability

About RipplingRippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.About the roleRippling’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 doLead and grow a team responsible for Rippling’s internal developer tooling and observability infrastructureDefine the long-term technical strategy and roadmap for developer productivity, tooling, and observabilityBuild and evolve internal tools and self-service capabilities that simplify how engineers develop, troubleshoot, and operate servicesOwn the reliability, scalability, and usability of logging, metrics, distributed tracing, and error-monitoring systemsPartner with engineering teams to understand their needs, prioritize improvements, and drive adoption of shared tools and platformsEstablish best practices for instrumentation, actionable alerting, and production debuggingLead initiatives across engineering organizations that improve developer workflows and reduce operational overheadDevelop and mentor engineers while maintaining a strong culture of ownership and technical excellenceDrive improvements in observability coverage, platform performance, and cost efficiencyWhat you will need8+ years of software or infrastructure engineering experience4+ years of engineering management experienceExperience leading teams that build internal developer tools, shared engineering platforms, or observability infrastructureStrong technical depth in distributed systems and cloud-based production environmentsExperience building or operating logging, metrics, tracing, or error-monitoring systems at scaleA strong developer experience mindset, with the ability to translate engineering needs into intuitive, widely adopted toolsStrong operational judgment, including experience improving production troubleshooting, alerting, and incident responseExperience developing senior engineers, Staff Engineers, and Principal EngineersExcellent cross-functional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to drive initiatives across engineering teamsAdditional InformationRippling 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 View email address on click.appcast.io 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.