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RipplingRipplingNew York, NY

Staff Software Engineer

Build foundational AI agent infrastructure at Rippling, owning agent creation, invocation, skill packaging, plugin connectivity, and automations. Lead platform and distributed systems work with 8+ years experience, technical leadership, and cross-functional impact.

189k – 315k/yr
Hybrid8+ YOEML Engineering

About the role

What you will do

  • 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
  • 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

What you will need

  • 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

Skills

AI Agentsllm infrastructureDistributed SystemsPlatform Engineeringautomation systemsplugin connectivityAgentic WorkflowsPythonJavaTypeScript

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