About the role
As a Senior Software Engineer on the AI Platform team, you will own production components end-to-end and help build scalable backend/platform systems for AI agents, automated workflows, evals, data pipelines, sandboxing, reliability, and model-quality infrastructure. This is a deeply hands-on engineering role where60% coding is non-negotiable. We are looking for engineers who can independently own components, operate in ambiguity, and grow toward Staff-level technical ownership over time.
Responsibilities:
- Build scalable backend and platform systems for Rippling's AI Platform.
- Own components and services end-to-end from design and implementation to launch, monitoring, and iteration.
- Work on foundational AI systems such as background agents, automated workflows, eval frameworks, data pipelines, reliability systems, and model-quality feedback loops.
- Partner with Product, Infra, Platform, and Engineering stakeholders to translate ambiguous problems into production-ready systems.
- Write production-quality code, review code, debug issues, and improve system reliability.
- Contribute to system design and architecture discussions.
- Improve observability, operational maturity, scalability, and performance of AI platform systems.
- Mentor junior engineers and help raise the quality bar through reviews and technical guidance.
Requirements:
- 5-8 years of software engineering experience, preferably in backend, platform, infrastructure, distributed systems, or product engineering.
- Strong hands-on coding ability; 60% coding expectation is non-negotiable.
- Strong programming knowledge in one or more languages such as Python, Java, Go/Golang, C++, Scala, Kotlin, or C#.
- Experience building and operating scalable backend/platform systems in production.
- Good system design fundamentals across APIs, databases, data modelling, concurrency, observability, debugging, and production operations.
- Ability to independently own well-defined to moderately ambiguous technical problems.
- Strong collaboration with Product, Infra, Platform, and Engineering stakeholders.
- Comfortable operating in fast-paced environments with changing priorities and high ownership.
- Practical curiosity or exposure to AI agents, LLM infrastructure, automation systems, ML/data infrastructure, inference pipelines, evals, or adjacent AI systems.
Preferred qualifications:
- Prior experience in high-growth or hyper-growth product/startup environments.
- Experience with AI agents, LLM tooling, AI infrastructure, automation platforms, eval systems, or data/ML pipelines.
- Strong Python and SQL knowledge.
- Experience with workflow orchestration, background automation, reliability platforms, internal tools, or developer productivity platforms.
- Exposure to permissions, approvals, auditability, compliance, or security-sensitive workflows.
- Prior exposure to enterprise SaaS, fintech, HR tech, payroll, benefits, compliance, IT, or workflow-heavy platforms.