Systems Engineering Manager
New York • FullTime
Posted 7mo ago
About the job
Modal is building the next-generation infrastructure layer for AI, enabling instant GPU access, sub-second container starts, and native storage for customers like Lovable, Ramp, Cognition, DoorDash, and Suno. We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team of experienced engineers focused on our serverless GPU platform. This is a hands-on leadership role where you will balance technical contributions with people management, setting direction, removing obstacles, and cultivating a strong engineering culture while addressing complex challenges in distributed computing, large-scale data handling, and performance optimization.
Responsibilities
- Recruit, hire, and grow a high-performing team of cloud platform engineers, providing coaching, feedback, and career development.
- Set clear performance expectations and foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Drive technical decisions through design reviews, code reviews, and architectural discussions.
- Translate the infrastructure roadmap into team priorities and milestones, ensuring execution.
- Establish standards for reliability, performance, and operational excellence, ensuring end-to-end project ownership.
- Promote sound judgment in tooling and architecture, avoiding unnecessary complexity.
- Partner with product and engineering to align infrastructure work with business priorities, communicating team progress and tradeoffs to leadership.
- Serve as the escalation point for major incidents, driving resolution and ensuring systematic learning for infrastructure improvements.
Requirements
- 10+ years of industry experience, with at least 3 years in a leadership role.
- Proven track record of building high-performance distributed systems at scale.
- Strong background in cloud infrastructure.
- Deep knowledge of low-level OS foundations, including Linux kernel, file systems, and containers.
- Proficiency in a systems-level programming language such as Rust, C, C++, or Java.