Manager Engineering

AI Labs \& the Team

AI Labs is Paylocity's team for rapid AI experimentation — we test and validate new AI-driven ideas quickly, with a bias toward hands-on building over long planning cycles. We're growing a new, early-career-focused engineering team based in the Rochester, NY area, and looking for a technical, hands-on manager to lead it from the ground up. You'll help shape both the team and its technical direction, working across real AI Labs projects from day one. This role reports to the Director for AI Labs.

Who You Are

• You've led and mentored engineers before, ideally early-career talent specifically, and know how to balance hands-on technical guidance with giving people room to own real work.
• A servant leader: you remove blockers and create opportunities for your team, and direct as needed.
• A strong communicator who shifts naturally between technical depth with your team and business framing with executives and stakeholders.
• Strong technical skills not tied to one stack, comfortable diving deep across a wide range of technologies and project types.
• Familiarity with .NET/C#.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, and operating cloud-based solutions in AWS, with a solid grasp of modern cloud architecture, scalability, security, and operational practice.
• Real experience building applications that use AI technologies directly — integrating AI services, LLMs, or other intelligent features into actual products, not just reading about them.
• Fluent in frontier AI tools as part of your own workflow (Claude, OpenAI, Copilot, or similar). You use them day to day, not just know they exist.
• A strong enough grasp of what your team builds and why to pressure-test any technical tradeoff they make.
• Genuinely passionate about exploring new ideas and tracking where AI is heading as you experiment with what you learn.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, wearing whatever hat the moment calls for since this team’s work is very exploratory.
• Curious and growth-oriented, adaptable to change.
• You enjoy the creative exploration with your team as much as the delivery. This role is as much about how your team learns as what it ships.
• Based in the Rochester, NY area, working hybrid alongside your team in Pittsford — this is about building a tight, in-person culture for a founding early-career team, not an attendance mandate.

What You Will Do

• Lead and manage a founding team of early-career engineers, co-located with you in Rochester, ensuring their work stays aligned with AI Labs' bets and Paylocity's broader goals.
• Mentor and coach technically and professionally
• Create real growth opportunities, recognize achievement publicly, and reward high performance appropriately.
• Give regular, direct feedback on individual performance.
• Build a team you invest in deeply and expect to see graduate into other engineering roles across Paylocity.
• Actively source and hire engineers locally; run technical interviews and screens for your team.
• Help lead the summer internship program based in Rochester, including selecting each year's cohort and mentoring interns day to day.
• Build and maintain Paylocity's relationship with local universities, including RIT, to establish a consistent, repeatable early-career pipeline.
• Represent Paylocity at campus events and technical community groups in the Rochester area as opportunities arise.
• Drive technical execution and delivery of high-quality, scalable solutions.
• Dive into complex systems and concepts deeply enough to credibly guide your team through them.
• Ensure your team's work follows security best practices and compliance standards.
• Facilitate and continuously improve your team's processes.
• Partner directly with business stakeholders and engineering counterparts across the org.
• Set realistic expectations with stakeholders and leadership, and raise risks early.
• Manage team capacity and resourcing so the right people are on the right work.
• Shape your team's and AI Labs' broader strategy through ongoing collaboration with leadership.
• Stay current on industry and AI trends and bring back what's actually useful.

What You Bring

• BS degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Technology, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years in a formal engineering management role
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining applications with .NET and C#
• Hands-on experience designing, developing, and operating cloud-based solutions in AWS
• Experience building applications that integrate AI technologies (AI services, LLMs, or other intelligent features) into customer-facing or internal applications
• Experience working in agile development environments, including driving process improvements
• Proven experience leading, mentoring, and developing engineering teams
• Strong collaboration skills across Product, Design, and Business functions

Physical requirements

• Ability to sit for extended periods: The role requires sitting at a desk or workstation for long periods, typically 7-8 hours a day.
• Use of computer and phone systems: The employee must be able to operate a computer, use phone systems, and type. This includes using multiple software programs and inquiries simultaneously.

Paylocity is an equal-opportunity employer. Paylocity is committed to the full inclusion of all individuals. We recruit, train, compensate, and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law. At Paylocity, we believe diversity makes us better.

We embrace and encourage our employees’ differences in age, culture, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion or spiritual belief, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our employees unique. We actively cultivate these differences through our employee resource groups (ERGs), employee experiences, perspectives, talents, and approaches to drive innovation in the software and services we provide our customers.

We comply with federal and state disability laws and make reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. To request reasonable accommodation in the job application or interview process, please contact [email protected]. This email address is exclusively designated for such requests, aligning with federal and state disability laws. Please do not send resumes to this email address, as they will be removed.

The base pay range for this position is $148,800 - $212,500/yr; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This position is eligible for an annual bonus and restricted stock unit grant based on individual performance in addition to a full range of benefits outlined here. This information is provided per the relevant state and local pay transparency laws for the location in which this position will be performed. Base pay information is based on market location. Applicants should apply via www.paylocity.com/careers.