Manager of Data & AI Platform Engineering, Guild Education
$200-240k
+ Stock options
More information about location
Upskilling and education platform for America's workforce
Open for applications
Upskilling and education platform for America's workforce
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$200-240k
+ Stock options
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
To unlock opportunity for America’s workforce through education and upskilling.
Role
Who you are
- A track record of building and leading high-performing engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development
- Ideally 8+ years of experience in data engineering, software engineering, ML/AI infrastructure, or platform engineering, with at least 3 years in an engineering management role
- Deep familiarity with data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, Airflow, dbt, FiveTran, BI tools) and AI/ML platform architecture (model serving, agent orchestration, evaluation frameworks, API gateway patterns)
- Strong product sense with the ability to translate business needs into platform capabilities and prioritize ruthlessly
- Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), container orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), and observability/production operations (monitoring, alerting, incident response, SLO management)
- Exceptional communication skills, comfortable presenting to executives, aligning with cross-functional partners, and writing clear technical documents
Desirable
- Hands-on experience with LLM fine-tuning, prompt engineering, or agent framework development
- Experience building internal data platforms or platform-as-a-product teams
- Background in education technology, HR tech, or marketplace businesses
- Experience operating in a 0-to-1 environment where you built a function from scratch
What the job involves
- As the Data and AI Platform Engineering Manager, you will lead the teams building Guild's Data platform and Apollo, our AI platform powering agent-based workflows, ML infrastructure, and AI-native tooling across the company
- This is a leadership-first role (70/30 coach/player) managing two small teams: Data Platform Engineering and AI Platform
- Your primary impact will come through the team you build and the systems you put in place to ship reliably, while partnering closely with product, data science, and platform engineering to align with Guild's FY27 strategic priority of becoming an AI-native company
- Build, develop, and retain a high-performing engineering team across two platform squads, owning hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development
- Drive the transition from ad-hoc AI usage to platform-powered, governed AI workflows, championing Guild's AI-native engineering vision
- Deliver a reliable, scalable, and secure data and AI platform that accelerates time-to-value for teams across Guild
- Manage, mentor, and grow engineers across the Data Platform and AI Platform teams by running effective rituals (sprint planning, retros, 1:1s) and fostering a culture of ownership, experimentation, and technical excellence
- Own hiring end-to-end for both teams: define roles, run interviews, calibrate leveling, and close candidates to fill out a high-performing organization
- Set and drive the technical roadmap for Apollo's platform layers (gateway, orchestration, eval, memory, and semantic) and the data platform that feeds into Apollo and Guild's broader product suite
- Make architecture decisions on build-vs-buy, vendor selection, and platform design trade-offs to ensure platform reliability, scalability, and security as adoption grows
- Partner with the Director of Data Engineering to align Apollo's direction with broader Foundations and company strategy
- Contribute to data governance, privacy, and compliance standards for AI/ML systems while staying current on the rapidly evolving AI landscape
- Build templatized solutions (Slackbots, MCP servers, agent templates) that accelerate time-to-value for other teams across Guild
- Champion Guild's data strategy to the entire company, ensuring data is accessible, well-governed, and powering key decisions
Our take
The recruitment process can be the most costly element of a company's operation, with future-proof skillsets requirements resulting in the hiring of staff for niche tasks. Many existing employees of a company could have the potential to fill talent gaps and prevent the need for a new hire, but they often lack the training for such roles. Helping to solve this problem, Guild Education helps employers partner with nonprofit universities to train staff across a variety of subject matters, including high school completion programs, vocational opportunities, and enrollment in higher education.
As professional development is a strong employer benefit, Guild Education also pitches itself as a perk for employees, aiming to increase retention and worker satisfaction. By solving two major problems - a skills shortage and worker retention, it has gained large companies such as Chipotle, Target, Hilton and PepsiCo as corporate clients.
The platform has secured some serious funding too. And is using this funding to develop its healthcare and financial services learning modules and increase its offering to workers by exploring new ways to lower the barriers to learning, for instance through childcare solutions and financial wellness tools.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-5% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jun 2022
$265m
SERIES F
Jun 2021
$150m
SERIES E
Total funding: $643.5m
Company benefits
- Equity stake in the company providing ownership and a path to future earnings (when we succeed, we all benefit)
- free one-on-one coaching with a certified financial planner, a platform with budgeting tools, investment and equity management center and many more financial resources through Origin (we believe financial literacy not only supports you personally, but also has a lasting impact in creating positive generational wealth practices)
- Employee Assistance Fund for unforeseen crises, disasters, and/or personal hardships and you need a little extra financial support (funded by the company and fellow Guilders to create a community of support)
- legal support and resources to navigate complicated situations like estate planning name changes, immigration, and more
- 401(k) plan with a range of diverse investment options and personalized retirement advice
- Well-rounded wellness benefits including free and low cost mental health resources and financial wellbeing support services
- Education benefits and tuition assistance to help your future development and growth
- Multiple paths to meet educational and professional goals
- Fertility benefits built into all of our medical plans
- A $10,000 family planning fund to take care of costs that aren’t covered by the medical plans like adoption, surrogacy, and egg freezing expenses
- 12-20 weeks of paid leave and a ramp-up program for Guilders to ease back into work after an extended time away
- An additional 3 weeks of paid leave if you are going through the adoption, surrogacy, or foster process to use prior to your child's arrival/placement to prepare and attend necessary meeting
- Inclusive guidance and support as you go through your family planning journey through Cleo
- Our on-site childcare center, The Beehive, offering care for children 3 months-6 years of age for employees and their friends and family members located in Colorado
- Personalized 1:1 support for anyone on the parenthood journey with access to a network of clinicians, experts, and specialists through Cleo
- 80 hours of low cost ($2/hr) emergency backup care for times employees unexpectedly find themselves without primary care for the ones they are responsible for
- Dedicated support in finding background-checked care providers to assist with child care, elder care, and chronic care needs through Helpr
- The ability to bring an actively nursing child and companion on work related trips
- Inclusive, affordable medical and behavioral healthcare when you need it
- Open PTO is available so Guilders can rest, recharge, and bring their best selves to work
- 10 Holidays including a collective week off over the 4th of July plus 5 floating holidays for cultural and religious events you celebrate
- Our leave policies are there to support employees and offer 12 weeks of fully paid medical, non-birthing parent, and caregiving leave as of day one of employment while birthing parents receive 18-20 weeks of fully paid leave
- Once Guilders reach 4.5 years of service, they are eligible for a 5-week fully paid sabbatical leave
- Up to 10 days of bereavement leave
- Up to 10 days of jury duty
- 8 sick days
Company HQ
Central Business District, Denver, CO
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