Senior Software Engineer, Backend - Rippling AI

About the role

Rippling is a company that brings together all of the workforce systems that are typically scattered across a company, such as payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. The company focuses on making it easier to manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical design and implementation for high-impact AI platform initiatives from design through production
• Collaborate closely with engineers across product, infra, and platform organizations
• Build scalable agent infrastructure that automates repetitive, high-frequency workflows across Rippling's product surface
• Design systems that are observable, self-correcting, and capable of improving over time with minimal human intervention
• Develop harness and platform capabilities that encode business logic and institutional knowledge into reliable, automated workflows
• Partner closely with Product to ensure AI-powered surfaces are trustworthy, controllable, and intuitive for end users and admins
• Mentor junior engineers, contribute to best practices for AI platform development, and raise the technical bar on your team
• Track the frontier, translate model capability improvements into architectural decisions and move quickly when new approaches unlock better outcomes

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with a proven track record of owning and delivering complex technical projects
• Strong expertise in platform and distributed systems engineering — you've built reliable, observable, large-scale systems
• Strong hands-on coding skills; you are an active, high-output contributor in the codebase
• Experience driving technical initiatives end-to-end, including collaborating across teams to deliver outcomes
• 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

Qualifications

• Recent hands-on experience building AI agents is a plus

Skills

• Software Engineering
• Platform and Distributed Systems Engineering
• Technical Project Management
• Product Development
• AI Agent Development

Benefits

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected characteristics.

Pay

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.

Schedule

Rippling highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. For office-based employees (employees who live within a defined radius of a Rippling office), Rippling considers working in the office, at least three days a week under current policy, to be an essential function of the employee's role.