Strategic Overview
Manager, Software Engineering - AI Infrastructure at Figma is a dev opportunity centered on the specialist responsibilities and outcomes described in the employer's listing.
The published role emphasizes work such as Lead, grow, and support a team of engineers building foundational infrastructure for Figma’s AI products. Partner with engineering and product leaders from across Figma to define the team’s technical strategy and manage the day-to-day project execution.
The role is listed for San Francisco, CA • New York, NY • United States with the working arrangement published with the role, giving candidates the practical context needed to assess fit before applying.
Key information at a glance
About This Role
Figma is growing our team of passionate creatives and builders on a mission to make design accessible to all. Figma’s platform helps teams bring ideas to life—whether you're brainstorming, creating a prototype, translating designs into code, or iterating with AI. From idea to product, Figma empowers teams to streamline workflows, move faster, and work together in real time from anywhere in the world. If you're…
The AI Infrastructure team builds the foundational inference systems that sit at the core of Figma’s AI products. Our team is responsible for ensuring products like Figma Make and Figma Agent are highly reliable, easily observable, and can seamlessly leverage the latest cutting-edge models. Our team owns critical production services like our AI gateway, metering systems, and trace infrastructure, as well as our…
We’re looking for a hands-on engineering leader to support & grow our team, define & execute on our technical strategy, and collaborate with teams across engineering to build best-in-class AI features.
Key Responsibilities & Objectives
- Lead, grow, and support a team of engineers building foundational infrastructure for Figma’s AI products.
- Partner with engineering and product leaders from across Figma to define the team’s technical strategy and manage the day-to-day project execution.
- Hire, coach, and develop senior and staff engineers to scale the team.
- Roll up your sleeves to engage deeply with technical details and decisions as needed in order to help the team deliver on a robust AI platform with urgency.
Required Qualifications & Candidate Blueprint
- A proven track record of motivating, mentoring, and growing experienced AI engineering leads.
- Demonstrated experience learning new AI technologies quickly building technical depth in a new domain.
- A background in adjacent platform domains, like recommendation systems or networking.
Salary & Benefits
Published compensation: $258,000 – $376,000 USD
Salary Benchmark
This role’s published compensation is compared with current employer-disclosed salary ranges for the same role at the Manager level in the same currency.
Benchmark uses active employer job postings in our database and excludes this listing. It is not a third-party salary estimate, and currencies are not converted.
Full Job Description
The following is the complete job description supplied by the source. We sanitize unsafe markup and remove external links, but do not shorten or rewrite the employer's source content.
Figma is growing our team of passionate creatives and builders on a mission to make design accessible to all. Figma’s platform helps teams bring ideas to life—whether you're brainstorming, creating a prototype, translating designs into code, or iterating with AI. From idea to product, Figma empowers teams to streamline workflows, move faster, and work together in real time from anywhere in the world. If you're excited to shape the future of design and collaboration, join us!
The AI Infrastructure team builds the foundational inference systems that sit at the core of Figma’s AI products. Our team is responsible for ensuring products like Figma Make and Figma Agent are highly reliable, easily observable, and can seamlessly leverage the latest cutting-edge models. Our team owns critical production services like our AI gateway, metering systems, and trace infrastructure, as well as our strategy for hosting first-party models. This role is an opportunity to join a rapidly-growing team at the ground floor and directly contribute to our core AI platform.
We’re looking for a hands-on engineering leader to support & grow our team, define & execute on our technical strategy, and collaborate with teams across engineering to build best-in-class AI features.
This is a full time role that can be held from one of our US hubs or remotely in the United States.
What you'll do at Figma:
- Lead, grow, and support a team of engineers building foundational infrastructure for Figma’s AI products.
- Partner with engineering and product leaders from across Figma to define the team’s technical strategy and manage the day-to-day project execution.
- Hire, coach, and develop senior and staff engineers to scale the team.
- Roll up your sleeves to engage deeply with technical details and decisions as needed in order to help the team deliver on a robust AI platform with urgency.
- Build an inclusive team and culture through thoughtful team-building and hiring practices.
We’d love to hear from you if you have:
- 3+ years of engineering management experience leading high-performing, fast-moving teams, ideally in the AI space.
- 8+ years of total engineering experience, ideally reaching a staff engineering level as an individual contributor.
- Experience working on production AI systems.
- A proven track record of motivating, mentoring, and growing experienced AI engineering leads.
- Demonstrated experience learning new AI technologies quickly building technical depth in a new domain.
- Experience building and scaling engineering teams and org structure as they grow.
While it’s not required, it’s an added plus if you also have:
- Experience building AI agents, agent harnesses/loops, or LLM/agent tooling platforms.
- Experience building high-scale production infrastructure (e.g., traffic/inference systems, metering, anti-abuse and billing systems).
- A background in adjacent platform domains, like recommendation systems or networking.
At Figma, one of our values is Grow as you go. We believe in hiring smart, curious people who are excited to learn and develop their skills. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with the points outlined in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Pay Transparency Disclosure
Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), market demands, and specific work location.
Figma offers equity to employees, as well as a competitive package of additional benefits, including health, dental, and vision coverage; retirement benefits with company contributions; parental leave and reproductive or family planning support; mental health and wellness benefits; and paid time off. Figma provides paid sick leave, holidays, and other leave benefits in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws, including the requirements of the Washington Minimum Wage Act and related regulations. Exempt employees are eligible for employer‑provided paid flexible PTO in addition to flexible paid sick leave. PTO is subject to manager approval. Additional benefits may include company recharge days, cell phone and home internet reimbursements, and a number of lifestyle spending accounts. Figma also offers sales incentive compensation for most sales roles and an annual bonus plan for eligible non-sales roles. All compensation and benefits are subject to applicable plan terms and may be modified by Figma at any time, consistent with applicable law.
At Figma we celebrate and support our differences. We know employing a team rich in diverse thoughts, experiences, and opinions allows our employees, our product and our community to flourish. Figma is an equal opportunity workplace - we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity/expression, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.
We will work to ensure individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to apply for a role, participate in the interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. If you require accommodation, please reach out to accommodations-ext@figma.com. These modifications enable an individual with a disability to have an equal opportunity not only to get a job, but successfully perform their job tasks to the same extent as people without disabilities.
Examples of accommodations include but are not limited to:
- Holding interviews in an accessible location
- Enabling closed captioning on video conferencing
- Ensuring all written communication be compatible with screen readers
- Changing the mode or format of interviews
To ensure the integrity of our hiring process and facilitate a more personal connection, we require all candidates keep their cameras on during video interviews. Additionally, if hired you will be required to attend in person onboarding.
By applying for this job, the candidate acknowledges and agrees that any personal data contained in their application or supporting materials will be processed in accordance with Figma's Candidate Privacy Notice.
Application limits: To help candidates focus on the opportunities most relevant to their skills and experience, Figma limits the number and frequency of applications. These limits apply to all roles:
- Candidates may submit up to 5 applications during any rolling 30-day period.
- Candidates may not reapply to the same role while an application is active or within 90 days of receiving a rejection.
Once the applicable days has passed, candidates are welcome to apply again.
Editor’s Market Perspective (Our Custom Analysis)
Why This Position Matters
This dev opening is a useful opportunity for candidates whose experience matches the role-specific capabilities named in the listing. Its strongest career signal is the scope of the work itself — particularly Lead, grow, and support a team of engineers building foundational infrastructure for Figma’s AI products. — rather than a generic title alone.
Resume & Application Strategy
For the application, mirror the employer's language where it truthfully matches your background: foreground the role-specific capabilities named in the listing, quantify outcomes from comparable work, and place the most relevant experience near the top of the resume. If the listing specifies tools, platforms, leadership scope, or domain experience, use those exact terms in context instead of presenting an unrelated keyword list.
We organize source-provided information into this independent job-seeker overview. Compensation is shown only when the source provides it; the official listing remains the authority for current requirements and application instructions.