Sr. Engineering Manager

About Betterment Betterment is a leading, technology-driven financial services company that offers investing, savings and retirement solutions for retail investors and investment advisors as well as financial wellness solutions, including a 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses. Our team is passionate about our mission, to empower people to build wealth with confidence and ease. We’re headquartered in NYC and offer hybrid NY-based positions (four days/ week in-office, with no required office days during the summer and winter holidays). About the Role The AI Platform team enables product teams across Betterment to build useful AI-powered features quickly, enjoyably, and responsibly. As Sr Engineering Manager, you will lead a team of senior/staff engineers delivering an expanding set of AI capabilities as well as shared infrastructure, LLM evaluation frameworks, and internal libraries. You will work directly with product and engineering leadership to drive the technical direction of our AI product development strategy. You will collaborate closely with product and compliance partners to ensure Betterment's AI capabilities are developed with the rigor that our customers and regulators expect. By joining us in the early days of our AI product efforts, you will have significant influence over how the organization delivers exciting features into the Betterment product across all lines of business. This role is based out of our NYC office. Below we've reflected the base salary range for this position. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. The range listed is just one component of Betterment’s total compensation package for employees. New York City: $200,000 - $240,000 This job may also be eligible for variable compensation in the form of a company incentive bonus. A Day in the Life: Lead and grow a team of senior/staff engineers building the foundation that enables all Betterment teams to deploy AI features. Identify high-leverage opportunities where AI organically enhances existing product value. Sequence your team roadmap to deliver product features that expand our organization’s AI technical capabilities. Partner with product teams to ship customer-facing AI functionality to production. Develop broad Betterment domain expertise in the process. Partner with legal and compliance leaders to scale processes that enable teams to build AI functionality quickly and responsibly within a regulated financial services environment. Cultivate an environment of open communication and creative problem-solving where engineers feel empowered to experiment, learn from failure, and propose ideas that align technical investment with product objectives. Translate Betterment’s strong culture of accountability into our AI processes – providing evaluation rigor, model observability, and thoughtful human oversight. What We’re Looking For: A senior engineering leader capable of hands-on work in our codebase. The ideal candidate will act as player-coach, working alongside their senior and staff IC direct reports to build Betterment’s AI systems. Proven track record leading engineering teams working on fullstack AI projects involving LLMs. Experience leading projects that affect multiple teams’ software systems, tooling, and development workflows. Comfort operating at the frontier. The ability to stay current with the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem. Clear judgment about when to use AI and when not to, maintaining a grounded, pragmatic perspective on what we should ship to production today. Personal technical expertise with AI tooling and ecosystem and experience making sound build vs buy decisions. Ability to build trust, alignment, and process across disciplines and teams. Principled approach to balancing the need to move quickly today with the need to move quickly tomorrow, with an appreciation of how to meet high standards for customer quality and regulatory requirements. Jo