Engineering Manager Platform - rec

Think about the last time you tried to book a tennis court. Or sign your kid up for a swim lesson. Or find an open rec league that actually fits your schedule. You probably ended up on a website that looked like it was built in 2003 — or god forbid, filled out a piece of paper.

$3T is spent on recreation globally, and it's built on a completely fragmented system that's largely untouched by technology.

At Rec (recreation.ai http://recreation.ai), we're using AI to change that — reimagining how the world plays, participates in community, and gets active. Our vision is simple: more recreation for everyone. We sit at a rare intersection — a consumer product loved by everyday players and an enterprise platform trusted by the organizations that power recreation.

We're a small team with firepower. Our founders were among the first few hundred at Uber, then led teams at The Athletic and MasterClass. The rest of the team combines builders from Google, Microsoft, Strava, Hipcamp, and Airbnb.

People join Rec for two reasons: you want to build AI that gets people back in the real world, and you want to work with really smart people.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As Rec scales across America, enters new markets, and processes hundreds of millions in revenue for our partners, the Platform team is what makes that possible. You'll own the foundation.

Platform spans Infrastructure, Payments & Finance, and DevEx/QA. It's the systems that keep Rec reliable, the money that moves correctly, and the tooling that lets our engineers ship with confidence. You'll lead a team of 4–6 engineers across all three areas, with a clear path to splitting teams as the team grows.

The job requires equal parts technical credibility and people leadership. You'll stay close to the code: reviewing, triaging bugs, and fixing things where it makes sense. You set the quality bar through your own standards. On the people side, you're coaching engineers, running the hiring loop for your team, and partnering with Product to shape an ambitious roadmap.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

Team Leadership

• Manage a team of 4–6 engineers across Infrastructure, Payments & Finance, and DevEx/QA. Run 1:1s, give real performance feedback, and invest in their careers.
• Run the hiring loop for your team. Source, evaluate, and close the engineers who will raise our bar.
• Build a culture on the Platform team where reliability is a first-class value, quality is the default, and engineers feel ownership over what they ship.

Technical Direction

• Set and hold the technical bar through code reviews, architecture decisions, and the willingness to say "we're not shipping this" when it's not ready.
• Stay close to the code. Review regularly, triage bugs, and fix things where it makes sense. Know what your team is building well enough to spot problems before they become incidents.