Senior Full-Stack Engineer (AI-Native)

Rippling; United States; On-site; USD 99,000 - 121,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

401(k) plan

Flexible PTO and holidays

Remote-first, home-office support

Direct access to leadership

Job summary

Cardiff, Inc. is building AI-native engineering systems to accelerate funding for small businesses. You will own customer-facing products and internal tools atop Cardiff's shared platform, reporting to the Managing Partner and collaborating with the Lead AI Architect.

In the first 90 days you will ship production features, prototype additional work, and establish measurable KPIs with stakeholders. By year one you’ll own production systems and drive faster AI-enabled development patterns.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering with ownership of production systems.
• Production features shipped using Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Devin, or similar as your primary way of building.
• Own the testing for what you build, from unit through integration, and ensure production-readiness.
• Finish things; get things to done rather than starting something new.
• Recent example of using AI tooling to deliver 3-5x faster outcomes.
• Depth in agent orchestration (loops, graphs, multi-step tool use, multi-agent patterns) with LLM APIs, RAG and vector databases.
• Build-vs-adopt judgment: open-source ecosystem over homegrown solutions where possible.
• Ability to recognize when AI output is wrong.

Responsibilities

• Own each project end to end: backend, frontend, deployment, and live iteration.
• Design and launch AI agents that talk to customers, tied to measurable results.
• Collaborate with the Lead AI Architect on architecture and Cardiff's AI platform evolution.
• Build against shared integrations: Salesforce, Snowflake, Gmail, Zoom, Slack, and internal tools.
• Favor open-source tooling where possible to reduce ownership burdens.
• Make AI tooling the default way of building, and review outputs before shipping.
• Ship a working v1 today and improve it Monday, not after a long wait.

Skills

Software engineering

AI tooling experience

Agent orchestration

Open-source AI ecosystem

Testing and production-readiness

LangGraph or similar

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

Codex

Devin

Job description

Cardiff lends to small businesses. Since 2004 we've funded more than $12 billion across the country, to businesses in logistics, healthcare, construction, professional services, and plenty in between. We're building our own underwriting technology, and we still answer the phone; our customers need capital fast, and they want a straight answer from a person who can actually help.

Location: Remote (U.S.)

Employment Type: Full-time

Why This Role Matters

Cardiff's edge is how quickly we can convert a lead into a funded customer. Today our average turnaround is 24 business hours; our goal is minutes, through automated systems with human-in-the-loop oversight. AI-native engineering has changed what one strong engineer can deliver, and we are staffing accordingly: not more headcount doing traditional work, but engineers who have rebuilt how they work around modern tooling and ship in days what used to take weeks. The work you do here goes straight into the systems that will get us there.

The Role

You'll own vertical projects end to end: the customer-facing products and internal tools that sit on top of Cardiff's shared platform. You'll report directly to the Managing Partner, work with our Lead AI Architect on system design, and sit with the stakeholders behind each project (operations, sales, underwriting, marketing, finance) to turn what they need into working product, often inside a week. The team is small and senior. Your work will be in production your first week, and what you own will grow as fast as you show you can carry it.

What Success Looks Like

In your first 90 days, you will:

• Ship a product to production that materially beats the status quo for the department you serve, measured on the KPI that fits: speed, accuracy, ROI, or conversions
• Take at least two more prototypes to production with clearly defined before-and-after KPIs
• Build positive working relationships with stakeholders
• Learn Cardiff's business model and integration surface well enough to ship against it without hand-holding

By the end of your first year:

• A portfolio of production systems you own, with attributable impact on funding volume, conversion, or operating cost
• Faster product cycles across the team, with AI-assisted development patterns you introduced now in common use
• A track record of judgment: systems that scale, and AI-generated code that got read, audited, and corrected rather than merged on faith

What You'll Do

• Own each project end to end: backend, frontend, deployment, and iteration once it's live
• Design and launch AI agents that talk to customers, tied to results you can measure
• Work with the Lead AI Architect on architecture and the ongoing evolution of Cardiff's AI platform
• Build against our shared integrations: Salesforce, Snowflake, Gmail, Zoom, Slack, and internal tools
• Reach for best-in-class open source before building from scratch: where the work isn't core IP, adopting a strong community project (think Buzz, the agent-native workspace Block recently open-sourced) beats owning the support and upgrade burden of a homegrown clone
• Make AI tooling your default way of building, and read what it produces before it ships
• Ship a working v1 today and improve it Monday, instead of a "perfect" v1 a month from now

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of professional software engineering, with senior-level ownership of production systems
• Production features shipped using Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Devin, or similar as your primary way of building, not occasional experimentation
• Own the testing for what you build, from unit through integration, and ensure it meets production-readiness standards before release.
• Finish things. Some of what you pick up will be sitting at 70 percent, and getting it to done counts more here than starting something new.
• A recent example (within the last six months) of using AI tooling to deliver something 3-5x faster than you could have without it
• Depth in agent orchestration (loops, graphs, multi-step tool use, multi-agent patterns; LangGraph or similar), with LLM APIs, RAG and vector databases, prompt engineering, and evals running in production, not just prototypes
• Build-vs-adopt judgment: fluent enough in the open-source AI ecosystem to reach for a strong community project rather than hand-rolling what already exists
• The engineering fundamentals to recognize when AI output is wrong

Nice to have:

• Salesforce APIs, Snowflake, or fintech/lending data models
• Contributions to open-source AI projects
• Experience shipping solo or on a small founding team

Who Does Well Here

You ship: a rough v1 in production beats a polished v1 in staging. You're fine with priorities that move. You work independently and communicate proactively; when something is blocked, you say so the same day.

You know the frontier better than we do. We're not looking to teach you the latest capabilities; we're looking to be wowed, and to learn from you.

We care less about the brand on your resume than what you've shipped in the last 90 days. A self-taught engineer with a GitHub full of working AI-native projects beats a 15-year veteran just starting to explore these tools. Show us the work.

This Role May Not Be a Fit If You

• Prefer structured corporate environments with clear lanes
• Want detailed direction before you start
• Would rather maintain systems than build them
• Use AI tools to assist your old workflow, rather than having rebuilt your workflow around them

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary from $110,000, with room above it for the right person
• Performance bonus of up to 20% of base, tied to delivery and business outcomes
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) plan
• Flexible PTO and observed holidays
• Remote-first, with support for your home-office setup
• Direct access to leadership and to the problems that matter

Cardiff, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.