Staff Software Engineer - AI Agents, Automations, & Plugins

About the role

Rippling is building the foundational AI infrastructure that powers intelligent, automated experiences across the entire platform. This role focuses on creating, invoking, installing, and orchestrating AI agents—both for Rippling's internal product teams and for customers building their own.

Responsibilities

• 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

Requirements

• 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

Qualifications

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

Skills

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

Benefits

• Competitive salary + benefits + equity
• Equal opportunity employer
• Reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities
• Office-based employees required to work in the office, at least three days a week

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

• Office-based employees required to work in the office, at least three days a week