Staff Software Engineer - AI Agents

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

• 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

This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. The salary for US-based employees will be aligned with one of the ranges below based on location; see which tier applies to your location here.

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365-all within 90 seconds.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors-including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock-and was named one of America’s best startup employers by Forbes.