Senior Software Engineer - AI Platform

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.

Skills

AI, C++, Go, Golang, Java, LLM, ML, Python, automation, backend, distributed systems, infrastructure, machine learning, platform