Senior Engineering Manager, Performance Engineering

Are you a seasoned engineering leader with a passion for unlocking platform scalability and performance? Do you thrive in high-impact environments where you can shape technical vision and mentor talented engineers? Are you excited to drive cutting-edge solutions that reduce risk and increase velocity at scale? If so, we invite you to be a part of our innovative team.

As the Senior Engineering Manager for Performance Engineering, you will lead a small, deeply technical team committed to ensuring Ridgeline’s platform scales reliably and predictably. In this hands-on leadership role, you'll set the vision for performance across the stack—from distributed systems to applications—while developing standardized workflows and reusable tooling that embed performance as a first-class discipline. You'll partner cross-functionally with Engineering Operations, SRE, and Product Engineering to drive high-impact outcomes using AI-assisted performance engineering tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT. Your contributions will help reduce risk, improve developer efficiency, and deliver scalable performance solutions that directly impact the business.

At Ridgeline, how we work matters as much as what we build. Ridgeliners act like owners, choose growth over comfort, and communicate with transparency. We assume positive intent, bias toward action, and bring solutions—not just problems. We celebrate wins, learn from setbacks, and thrive in a resilient, collaborative, high-performing culture. If the Ridgeline Way excites you, we’d love to meet you.

The impact you will have:

• Lead and grow a high impact performance engineering team
• Set the vision, roadmap, and standards for performance across distributed systems, data platforms, and applications
• Partner with SRE, Engineering Operations, and Data Engineering to influence architecture and execution
• Drive high-impact performance investigations and ensure learnings turn into durable improvements
• Drive standardized, AI-assisted workflows that enforce performance best practices, validate system behavior over time, and reduce manual effort through automated analysis and agents.
• Build cost-effective performance testing and benchmarking workflows that model multiple customer profiles, usage patterns, and scale characteristics without relying on expensive or full-production test environments.
• Ensure performance work results in reusable tooling and clear leverage, not one-off fixes
• Hire, develop, and coach engineers with a strong emphasis on ownership and execution
• Communicate progress, risks, and impact clearly to leadership

What we look for:

• 12+ years of engineering experience, including 3+ years managing technical teams
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, and modern SRE practices
• Experience building or scaling performance and reliability capabilities in a growth-stage company
• Strong technical judgment paired with excellent people leadership skills
• Ability to translate strategy into execution without micromanaging

About Ridgeline

Ridgeline is the first front-to-back system of record for investment managers. Founded by visionary entrepreneur Dave Duffield (co-founder of both PeopleSoft and Workday), the company was created to modernize an industry held back by outdated, disconnected technology. Powered by a single, real-time data set and embedded AI, Ridgeline helps firms automate complexity, accelerate collaboration, and deliver tailored client experiences at scale, without added headcount or risk. Ridgeline is headquartered in Lake Tahoe, with offices in New York, Reno, and the Bay Area, and is recognized by Fast Company as a “Best Workplace for Innovators,” by Frost & Sullivan as a “Technology Innovation Leader,” and by The Software Report as a “Top 100 Software Company.”

Ridgeline is proud to be a community-minded, discrimination-free equal opportunity workplace.

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