# Staff Software Engineer

**Company:** [Rippling](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/rippling)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA, New York, NY
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $189k – $315k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** LLMs, Python, Go, Java, Kubernetes, Distributed Systems, model inference, rl training, schema retrieval, agent harnesses
**Posted:** 2026-07-31

> Build and scale AI platforms for Rippling's Data Cloud, focusing on schema retrieval, query planning, LLM training pipelines, RL environments, and agent harnesses for intelligent workforce workflows. Requires 8+ years experience with production LLMs, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure.

## Job Description

## What you will do
- Develop a state of the art schema retrieval system that operates over Rippling native and customer defined schema.
- Implement and scale Data Cloud’s AI training pipelines for data retrieval, from designing data generation to managing training clusters.
- Design and build RL training environments for structured and unstructured data retrieval.
- Develop agent harnesses enabling product teams to safely build AI features on Data Cloud.
- Optimize model serving and inference for scale from GPU level performance to agentic user experiences.
- Partner with AI Platform, Infrastructure, Security, and Product Engineering to drive architecture, standards, and rollout plans.
- Lead technical direction, mentor engineers, and drive execution on multi-team, ambiguous initiatives.

## What you will need
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant ownership of distributed systems in production.
- Experience post training and deploying LLMs in production environments.
- Experience optimizing model inference at scale, particularly with LLMs and embedding models.
- Strong backend engineering skills in one or more languages such as Python, Go, or Java.
- Experience with cloud-native infrastructure (Kubernetes, container orchestration, observability, reliability engineering).
- Ability to drive cross-functional technical strategy and execute through influence across teams.

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/13a41b0f-9c27-41cb-8333-6edbbff87b6c
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/13a41b0f-9c27-41cb-8333-6edbbff87b6c