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# Staff Software Engineer - AI Agents, Automations, & Plugins

- **Company:** CO-RIPPLING LLC
- **Location:** New York, NY, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $189,000.0 - $315,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Code Review, Software Debugging, Distributed Systems, Software Engineering, AI Infrastructure, Large Language Models, Backend, Codebase, Virtual Agents, Software Coding, Legacy Systems
- **Published:** July 30, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=831517b31b53a565

## About the Role

* 8+ years of software engineering experience with a proven track record of technical leadership and org-wide impact
 * Deep expertise in platform and distributed systems engineering - you've built reliable, observable, large-scale systems
 * Strong hands-on coding skills, you are an active contributor in the codebase alongside your leadership responsibilities
 * Experience leading complex, cross-functional technical initiatives and driving alignment across multiple teams
 * Strong product instincts, you translate ambiguous problems into durable platform capabilities and partner effectively with product teams
 * Clear, precise communication to diverse audiences, both written and verbal
 * Comfort with ambiguity and high velocity, the roadmap evolves as the technology evolves
 * Strong curiosity around AI agents, LLM infrastructure, agentic workflows, automation systems, or plugin/tool-use architectures
 * Recent hands-on experience building AI agents is a plus

## Description

Rippling is building the foundational AI infrastructure that powers intelligent, automated experiences across the entire platform. The Agents, Automations & Plugins team sits within the AI Cloud org and owns everything related to creating, invoking, installing, and orchestrating AI agents - both for Rippling's internal product teams and for customers building their own.

This team is responsible for:

*
Plugins & MCP Connectivity - how external tools and services connect to Rippling's AI layer

 * Automations - event-driven and scheduled AI-powered workflows that execute autonomously
 * Agents - the foundational primitives that allow AI agents to be created, triggered, and composed with skills and tools
 * Skills Packaging & Installation - how capabilities are bundled, distributed, and made available to agents

This is greenfield, foundational work. You're not maintaining legacy systems - you're building the platform layer that every AI-powered feature at Rippling will depend on. The team recently transitioned from Talent Engineering into the AI Cloud org under Laks Srini, and is now laser-focused on shipping the core agent infrastructure.

What you will do

 * Own major AI agent infrastructure initiatives across backend, platform, and AI-enabled systems
 * Lead design and execution for systems supporting agent creation, invocation, triggering, skill packaging, plugin connectivity, and automation orchestration
 * Build the foundational tools and primitives that enable both internal Rippling teams and external customers to create and deploy their own AI agents
 * Act as a technical lead for cross-functional work involving Product, AI Infra, Platform, and Engineering teams across the AI Cloud org
 * Break down ambiguous technical problems into clear architecture and execution plans - the roadmap is actively being built, and you'll shape it
 * Write code, review critical code paths, debug production issues, and make implementation-level decisions daily
 * Build platform systems that are reusable across multiple Rippling product teams
 * Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, code reviews, mentoring, and technical guidance
 * Balance speed, quality, reliability, and long-term platform maintainability in a fast-moving environment


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