Senior Staff Software Engineer, AI

Rippling is building Rippling AI and the core AI Platform. These foundational systems will support AI capabilities across Payroll, Benefits, HR Products, Talent, Spend, IT, Data Cloud, and among product areas., * Lead architecture and execution for foundational systems supporting AI capabilities across Rippling.

• Build and guide work across AI platform infrastructure, harness engineering, eval frameworks, model-related infrastructure, sandboxing, scaling, latency, and reliability.
• Support AI capabilities across Payroll, Benefits, HR Products, Talent, Spend, IT, and Data Cloud.
• Lead without formal authority while staying deeply connected to execution.
• Write code, review critical code paths, debug complex production issues, prototype solutions, and make implementation-level decisions.
• Partner with Product, Infra, Platform, AI, and senior engineering stakeholders to convert ambiguous AI/product bets into scalable systems.
• Mentor Staff, Senior, and SE II engineers while raising engineering standards across design, coding, debugging, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Define technical patterns and platform primitives that can be reused by product teams across Rippling.
• Help shape the long-term technical foundation for Rippling AI.

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, depending on quality of scope and impact.
• Strong backend, platform, infrastructure, distributed systems, or systems engineering foundation.
• Deep hands-on coding ability; must be able to design, review, debug, and write code regularly.
• Strong programming knowledge in one or more languages such as Python, Java, Go/Golang, C++, Scala, Kotlin, or C#.
• Proven experience owning broad, ambiguous technical charters across multiple systems or teams.
• Strong architecture and system design depth across large-scale production systems.
• Strong technical judgment across scale, reliability, latency, observability, APIs, data modeling, concurrency, and production operations.
• Ability to operate as a builder-leader: someone who can define direction, align stakeholders, and still build.
• Ability to influence and lead without formal authority while staying close to implementation.
• High intellectual horsepower, fast learning ability, and comfort operating in ambiguity.
• Strong product/platform judgment and ability to connect technical decisions to business and customer impact.
• Ability to mentor and elevate engineers across levels.
• AI/ML background is a strong plus, but not mandatory; practical exposure or strong adjacent experience in AI platform infrastructure, agents, evals, ML/data infra, model infrastructure, inference, sandboxing, workflow automation, scaling, latency, or reliability is highly valuable.

The following would be highly preferable, but not required

• Prior experience building AI platform infrastructure, eval frameworks, harness systems, LLM tooling, model-quality systems, or ML/data infrastructure.
• Experience with sandboxing, inference systems, scaling, latency optimization, reliability engineering, or large-scale distributed platforms.
• Strong Python and SQL knowledge.
• Experience with Go, Java, C++, or Scala in backend, infra, platform, or distributed systems environments.
• Experience building internal platforms used by multiple product teams.
• Prior experience in high-growth / hyper-growth startups or fast-moving product-led technology companies.
• Exposure to enterprise SaaS, fintech, HR tech, payroll, benefits, compliance, IT, Data Cloud, or workflow-heavy platforms.

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.