Staff Software Engineer - Rippling AI

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. Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from top investors and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.

About the Role

At Rippling, we're building an autonomous operating system for work by investing in the next generation of enterprise AI: intelligent background automation, self-monitoring systems, and a custom intelligence layer built on Rippling's unique data and workflows. The opportunity is to make Rippling's products fundamentally smarter and more autonomous through platform-level infrastructure that compounds.

You'll join the team that launched Rippling AI, the fastest-growing product in Rippling's history. Every customer touchpoint—from onboarding to expense approvals to IT requests—is being rebuilt around agents, and the platform you build will serve as the foundation for all AI surfaces at Rippling. This is a high-impact role with startup speed and the reach of a category leader.

As a Staff Engineer on Rippling AI, you'll serve as a technical lead across multiple teams, own architecture for high-impact initiatives, and lead cross-functional pods of engineers from product, infra, and platform orgs. This is a deeply hands-on role where you'll work alongside top engineers and product leaders with direct visibility to executive leadership.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical architecture for high-impact AI platform initiatives from design through production
• Lead a cross-functional pod of highly talented engineers, interacting with 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 engineers across the org, establish best practices for AI platform development, and raise the technical bar broadly
• Track the frontier, translate model capability improvements into architectural decisions, and move quickly when new approaches unlock better outcomes

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

Pay

The salary for US-based employees will be aligned with one of the ranges below based on location. A variety of factors are considered when determining compensation, including professional background, experience, and location.

• US San Francisco Bay Area: 198,000 - 330,000 USD per year
• US Tier 1: 198,000 - 330,000 USD per year

This role will receive a competitive salary, benefits, and equity.

Schedule

Rippling highly values in-office collaboration. For office-based employees (those within a defined radius of a Rippling office), working in the office at least three days a week is considered an essential function of the role.