Software Engineer II, Backend - Rippling AI

About Rippling

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America’s best startup employers by Forbes.

We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.

About the role

At Rippling, we’re not just building AI features, we’re building an autonomous operating system for work.

We’re investing heavily in the next generation of enterprise AI: intelligent background automation, systems that monitor and improve themselves, and a custom intelligence layer built on Rippling’s unique data and workflows. The opportunity is to make Rippling’s products fundamentally smarter and more autonomous over time, not through one-off features, but through platform-level infrastructure that compounds.

You’ll be joining the team that recently launched Rippling AI, the fastest-growing product in Rippling’s history. Every customer touchpoint, from onboarding to expense approvals to IT requests, is being rebuilt around agents, and the platform you build will be the foundation every AI surface at Rippling runs on. We’re moving at startup speed with the reach of a category leader, and we’re staffing this team like it’s the most important bet at the company.

As a Software Engineer on AI Platform, you’ll own meaningful technical initiatives end-to-end, dive deep into cutting edge technical problems, and collaborate closely with engineers across product, infra, and platform orgs. You’ll work alongside some of the best engineers and product leaders at Rippling. This is a deeply hands-on role where you’ll be in the weeds of the code.

What you will do

• Build and ship product and platform features that help teams use AI reliably across Rippling. -
• Work on backend systems, APIs, evaluation tools, and internal platform capabilities that support AI-powered workflows.
• Implement well-scoped pieces of agent infrastructure, including integrations, orchestration logic, monitoring, and quality checks.
• Write clean, maintainable code and tests, and participate in code reviews with a focus on correctness, reliability, and simplicity.
• Debug production issues, improve observability, and help make AI systems easier to understand and operate. -
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other engineers to clarify requirements and deliver practical solutions.
• Learn quickly as AI tools and model capabilities evolve, and apply new approaches where they improve reliability or user experience.
• Contribute to team documentation, implementation plans, and shared engineering practices.

What you will need

• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience, preferably building backend, platform, infrastructure, or product systems.
• Strong coding fundamentals and the ability to independently deliver well-defined projects or substantial parts of larger projects.
• Experience building production systems with attention to reliability, testing, observability, and maintainability. -
• Familiarity with distributed systems, APIs, data models, asynchronous workflows, or service-oriented architectures.
• Ability to break down ambiguous tasks, ask good questions, and make steady progress with guidance from senior engineers.
• Clear written and verbal communication, especially when explaining implementation tradeoffs, edge cases, and project status.
• Interest in AI products, LLMs, agents, evaluation, or automation systems; direct hands-on experience is a plus but not required.
• Comfort working in a fast-moving environment where requirements may change as the product and technology mature.

Additional Information

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce and do not discriminate based on race, re…