Senior Manager, Engineering (AI-Forward Platform Builder, RIA)

At NerdWallet, we're on a mission to bring clarity to all of life's financial decisions and every great mission needs a team of exceptional Nerds. We've built an inclusive, flexible, and candid culture where you're empowered to grow, take smart risks, and be unapologetically yourself. Whether remote or in-office, we support how you thrive best. We invest in your well-being, development, and ability to make an impact because when one Nerd levels up, we all do.

NerdWallet's RIA (Registered Investment Advisory) team builds and operates the platforms that power our financial advisory experiences. They own our lead generation marketplace, content rendering infrastructure, and the systems supporting our wealth management firms' business and website. We're looking for a rare kind of leader: part builder, part operator, and fully in command of what AI makes possible right now. Someone who can keep a high-traffic financial platform running with precision today while rewriting how their team works tomorrow. If you've shipped AI-native products in production, know how to turn a small team into a force multiplier through AI-assisted workflows, and can navigate a scaled organization without losing your startup edge, this role was written for you.

This role reports to the GM of RIA.

• Lead a small team of engineers, product managers, and designers, running the org as it exists today while actively transforming how it operates tomorrow

• Serve as a hands-on technical force multiplier: architect systems, prototype with emerging AI tools, and model what great building looks like in practice

• Own your team's AI transformation strategy: identify where LLMs, agents, and AI-assisted workflows unlock the most leverage, deploy them deliberately, and measure the impact on shipping velocity and output quality

• Bring genuine technical depth in AI systems. You understand how to build reliable, production-grade LLM-powered products, not just integrate APIs; you know what evals, observability, and prompt pipelines look like at scale

• Architect the decision of when to build vs. buy vs. orchestrate: you can assess AI vendor capabilities critically, know when a third-party model or tool is the right call, and when you need to own it

• Own the roadmap alongside Product and business partners; translate fuzzy business goals into focused, executable technical strategy

• Drive pragmatic, high-leverage engineering decisions: choose the right tool for the job, not the trendiest one, and know the difference

• Navigate organizational complexity with confidence. You know how to build consensus, move initiatives through cross-functional processes, and get things done without losing your edge

• Balance the tension between speed and stability for high-traffic, mission-critical financial systems

• Cultivate a culture of curiosity, ownership, and continuous learning, pushing your team to work AI-natively, not just AI-aware

• Ensure systems owned by the team meet availability, performance, and security standards with a practical, risk-calibrated approach

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful time spent building and shipping in a startup or early-stage environment

• 3+ years managing an engineering team, ideally a cross-functional one including product and/or design

• Demonstrated ability to operate at a Staff-level technical depth alongside management responsibilities

• Demonstrated history of building and deploying AI-powered systems in production - not just integrating APIs, but owning reliability, observability, prompt pipelines, and eval frameworks for LLM-backed features

• Deep, hands-on familiarity with the current AI tooling landscape: you have opinions on agent frameworks, RAG architectures, model selection tradeoffs, and what "production-ready" actually means for GenAI systems

• Hands-on full-stack software engineering skills with experience in modern web systems (NextJS, TypeScript, AWS a strong plus)

• Genuine hacker mentality: you find the fastest, smartest path to a working solution and have the judgment to know when "good enough" is right and when it isn't

• Strong business acumen. You think about ROI, user impact, and revenue, not just technical elegance

• Proven ability to operate effectively inside a larger, more process-heavy organization without losing the startup bias for action

• Experience building scalable, reliable systems with a pragmatic approach to architecture and technical debt

• Strong communicator who can translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders and influence without authority

• Comfortable with the compliance and regulatory realities of financial products (or eager to get up to speed quickly)

• Experience in FinTech, regulated industries, or consumer financial products

• Track record shipping AI-native features (agents, RAG pipelines, AI-assisted workflows) in a production environment, including building the observability and evaluate infrastructure to sustain them

• Experience leading a team through an AI workflow transformation - not just adopting tools, but fundamentally changing how the team scopes, builds, and ships

• Experience scaling a team or product through a significant growth inflection

• This role will be remote (based in the U.S.).

• We believe great work can be done anywhere. No matter where you are based, NerdWallet offers benefits and perks to support the physical, financial, and emotional well being of you and your family.

• Industry-leading medical, dental, and vision health care plans for employees and their dependents

• Rejuvenation Policy – Flexible Vacation Time Off + 11 holidays + holiday company shutdown

• New Parent Leave for employees with a newborn child or a child placed with them for adoption or foster care

• Mental health support

• Paid sabbatical after 5 years for Nerds to recharge, gain knowledge, and pursue their interests

• Health and Dependent Care FSA and HSA Plan with monthly NerdWallet contribution

• Monthly Wellness Stipend, Cell Phone Stipend, and Wifi Stipend (Only remote Nerds are eligible for the Wifi Stipend)

• Work from home equipment stipend and co-working space subsidy (Only remote Nerds are eligible for these stipends)

• Nerd-led group initiatives – Employee Resource Groups for Parents, Diversity, and Inclusion, Women, LGBTQIA, and other communities

• Hackathons and team events across all teams and departments

• Company-wide events like NerdLove (employee appreciation) and our annual Charity Auction 

• Our Nerds love to make an impact by paying it forward – Take 8 hours of volunteer time off per quarter and donate to your favorite causes with a company match

• 401K with 4% company match

• Be the first to test and benefit from our new financial products and tools

• Financial wellness, guidance, and unlimited access to a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) through Northstar

• Disability and Life Insurance with employer-paid premiums

If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents linked here.

NerdWallet is committed to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We prohibit discrimination and harassment on the basis of any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law, so all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.  

NerdWallet will consider qualified applicants with a criminal history pursuant to the California Fair Chance Act and the San Francisco Fair Chance Act, which requires this notice, as well as the Los Angeles Fair Chance Act, which requires this notice.

NerdWallet participates in the Department of Homeland Security U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services E-Verify program for all US locations. For more information, please see:

• E-Verify Participation Poster (English+Spanish/Español)

• Right to Work Poster (English) / (Spanish/Español) 

#LI-Remote