Staff Software Engineer - Data Cloud Applied ML

Data Cloud is Rippling’s unified data platform that makes operational data across HR, IT, and Finance queryable, governable, and actionable for analytics, reporting, and intelligent product workflows., We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to build the AI platforms within Data Cloud. At Rippling, you aren’t just building an AI feature; you are architecting the intelligence layer for the unified workforce system. This is a high-impact platform role focused on building state of the art systems for schema retrieval, query planning, and execution. You will partner closely with Rippling’s AI Platform team to define shared primitives for model tuning, inference, evaluation, and development of task specific agent harnesses, while owning Data Cloud-specific capabilities that improve quality, reliability, and scale., * Develop a state of the art schema retrieval system that operates over Rippling native and customer defined schema.

• Implement and scale Data Cloud’s AI training pipelines for data retrieval, from designing data generation to managing training clusters.
• Design and build RL training environments for structured and unstructured data retrieval.
• Develop agent harnesses enabling product teams to safely build AI features on Data Cloud.
• Optimize model serving and inference for scale from GPU level performance to agentic user experiences.
• Partner with AI Platform, Infrastructure, Security, and Product Engineering to drive architecture, standards, and rollout plans.
• Lead technical direction, mentor engineers, and drive execution on multi-team, ambiguous initiatives.

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant ownership of distributed systems in production.
• Experience post training and deploying LLMs in production environments.
• Experience optimizing model inference at scale, particularly with LLMs and embedding models.
• Strong backend engineering skills in one or more languages such as Python, Go, or Java.
• Experience with cloud-native infrastructure (Kubernetes, container orchestration, observability, reliability engineering).
• Ability to drive cross-functional technical strategy and execute through influence across teams.

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.

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone’s compensation-including a candidate’s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed below.

The pay range for this role is: 189,000 - 315,000 USD per year(US Tier 1)

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.