Staff Software Engineer - Rippling AI

Overview

Ripping gives businesses one place to manage HR, IT, and Finance. It consolidates various workforce systems into a single system, allowing for the management and automation of the entire employee lifecycle.

About the Role

Join Rippling, a company headquartered in San Francisco, CA, that has raised over $1.4 billion from top investors including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock. Named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes, Rippling prioritizes candidate safety and is committed to building an autonomous operating system for work.

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

Qualifications

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

Benefits

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need assistance during the hiring process. To request a reasonable accommodation, please email accommodations@rippling.com.

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.

Pay

The pay range for this role is: 198,000 - 330,000 USD per year (US San Francisco Bay Area), 198,000 - 330,000 USD per year (US Tier 1).

Schedule

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.

Engineering

San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Seattle, WA