Engineering Manager, AI Gateway

About Vercel:

Vercel gives developers the tools and cloud infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. As the team behind v0, Next.js, and AI SDK, Vercel helps customers like Ramp, Supreme, PayPal, and Under Armour build for the AI-native web.

Our mission is to enable the world to ship the best products. That starts with creating a place where everyone can do their best work. Whether you're building on our platform, supporting our customers, or shaping our story: You can just ship things.

About the Role:

We are looking for an Engineering Manager for our AI Gateway team, focused on building and scaling the infrastructure that powers unified AI model access across Vercel's platform. The AI Gateway provides developers with a single, reliable endpoint to access hundreds of AI models from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and more — abstracting away rate limits, failovers, and provider-specific complexity so teams can focus on building.

As the Engineering Manager, you will lead a talented team of engineers responsible for the reliability, performance, and extensibility of the AI Gateway. You will drive the technical direction and execution of the platform to shape the future of how developers interact with AI at scale.

What You Will Do:

• Lead and grow a high-performing team of engineers working on the AI Gateway platform, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and collaboration.
• Drive the architecture and execution of core platform capabilities, including unified API endpoints, intelligent rate limit management, automatic failover mechanisms, and provider-agnostic authentication.
• Partner cross-functionally with product, AI research, and infrastructure teams to define roadmap priorities and deliver high-impact features that improve reliability and developer experience.
• Ensure production-ready reliability for AI workloads at scale, maintaining low-latency performance and high availability across providers and regions.
• Champion developer experience — gathering feedback from internal and external developers to continuously improve the Gateway's usability, observability, and analytics capabilities.
• Engage with the open-source community and align the team's work with Vercel's broader ecosystem, including AI SDK and related projects.
• Recruit, mentor, and develop engineers on the team, supporting their growth through regular feedback, career development conversations, and a healthy team culture.

About You:

• 3+ years of Engineering Management experience, with a track record of leading and scaling backend or infrastructure engineering teams.
• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with a strong foundation in backend development, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Experience with AI/ML integrations, API gateways, or high-throughput services — particularly concepts like rate limiting, caching, and intelligent failover.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript; experience with the Vercel AI SDK or similar AI developer tooling is a plus.
• Familiarity with cloud-based and serverless architectures, particularly within the Vercel ecosystem.
• A genuine passion for developer experience and a deep appreciation for what it takes to build reliable, production-grade infrastructure.
• Experience contributing to or engaging with open-source communities is a plus.

Benefits:

• Competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Inclusive Healthcare Package.
• Learn and Grow - we provide mentorship and send you to events that help you build your network and skills.
• Flexible Time Off.
• We will provide you the gear you need to do your role, and a WFH budget for you to outfit your space as needed.

The San Francisco, CA base pay range for this role is $232,000 - $319,000. Actual salary will be based on job-related skills, experience, and location. Compensation outside of San Francisco may be adjusted based on employee location. The total compensation package may include benefits, equity-based compensation, and eligibility for a company bonus or variable pay program depending on the role. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process. 

Vercel is committed to fostering and empowering an inclusive community within our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Vercel encourages everyone to apply for our available positions, even if they don't necessarily check every box on the job description.