Senior Manager, AI Enablement

Justworks•New York, NY

5d•$188,000 - $242,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Justworks is creating an AI Enablement team within IT Services to make AI-powered development and automation more accessible across the company. The Senior Manager will lead the team, initially comprising one senior engineer with plans to hire another, and shape its culture, technical direction, and operating model. The team will own the employee AI platform, develop AI agents and automations, and establish engineering foundations that help employees build and deploy applications independently. The role combines people leadership with hands-on technical work. The Senior Manager will coach and develop senior engineers while guiding architecture, development, debugging, and technical problem-solving. They will oversee the administration and evolution of Claude and Cowork, build integrations and agentic solutions, and partner with Security, Governance, business stakeholders, and technical teams to deliver secure, reliable, production-ready systems. The position also focuses on enabling employee-built applications through reusable deployment patterns, tooling, CI/CD practices, engineering standards, education, and self-service resources. Success includes improving platform reliability and accessibility, delivering useful production AI solutions, reducing employee development barriers, and measuring adoption and business impact.

Requirements

Significant professional experience in software engineering, applied AI, or platform engineering, with the depth to architect systems, review code, and contribute directly to technical work.
At least 4 years managing engineers directly, with responsibility for hiring, performance, and career development; tech lead experience alone does not substitute.
Hands-on experience building and deploying AI-powered applications or agents using modern large language models.
Strong understanding of agentic AI architectures, including tool calling, agent orchestration, APIs, and integrations with external systems.
Proficiency in Python or another modern programming language, including the ability to review code, troubleshoot unfamiliar applications, and contribute to engineering solutions.
Experience building and operating production applications, including deployment, dependency management, CI/CD, monitoring, and incident troubleshooting.
Strong understanding of software architecture, API design, authentication, authorization, and secure development practices.
Experience with cloud platforms, containerization, and modern application deployment patterns.
Ability to balance hands-on technical contributions with engineering leadership, prioritization, and team development.
Strong communication and collaboration skills when working with employees and stakeholders with varying levels of technical experience.
A practical approach to AI focused on solving real problems, improving workflows, and delivering sustainable solutions.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Claude, Anthropic APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP), or comparable AI platforms and integration frameworks.
Experience with agent development frameworks such as LangGraph, Google ADK, or similar orchestration tools.
Experience establishing internal developer platforms, engineering enablement programs, or self-service development capabilities.
Familiarity with AI-assisted software development tools and the challenges of moving generated applications into production.
Experience implementing evaluation frameworks, tracing, monitoring, and reliability controls for AI agents.
Experience working in regulated environments where security, privacy, and compliance are important considerations.
Experience building or scaling a new engineering team or technical function.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop a team of senior engineers with complementary expertise.
Establish the team's technical direction, priorities, engineering practices, and delivery processes.
Remain hands-on with solution architecture, development, debugging, and technical problem-solving.
Partner with stakeholders across Justworks to understand business needs, prioritize opportunities, and deliver measurable impact.
Build a culture of technical ownership, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.
Oversee the administration, integration, reliability, and evolution of Claude and Cowork as the employee AI platform.
Guide development of integrations, MCP servers, APIs, and automation connecting AI to enterprise systems.
Partner with Security, Governance, and technical teams to establish controls for data access, authentication, authorization, and responsible AI use.
Evaluate emerging AI capabilities for potential productivity improvements and new workflows.
Lead the design, development, deployment, and maintenance of AI agents and applications that address business problems.
Establish approaches for agent orchestration, tool calling, context management, error handling, evaluation, and observability.
Translate business and technical opportunities into practical, maintainable solutions.
Balance rapid experimentation with production security, reliability, and operational requirements.
Help employees develop, deploy, and maintain applications created with AI-assisted development tools.
Provide technical leadership on dependencies, runtime environments, APIs, authentication, deployment, and application architecture.
Establish reusable deployment patterns, templates, tooling, and CI/CD practices.
Develop engineering standards and guardrails that support secure, reliable application development.
Provide targeted engineering assistance without becoming the default owner or support team for every employee-built application.
Guide office hours, workshops, documentation, and self-service resources that help employees build and operate solutions independently.
Turn recurring development and deployment challenges into reusable tools, guidance, or platform improvements.
Establish measures of AI platform adoption, agent performance, deployment success, employee enablement, and business value.
Use employee feedback and operational data to improve team capabilities and priorities.