Senior Software Engineer - First Core Engineer, AI-Driven

Rippling; Newton (MA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 175,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Competitive compensation

Job summary

Alder is an early-stage startup building the next generation of scalable, AI-augmented applications. We’re small, ambitious, and moving fast, seeking exceptional engineers who want to shape the foundation of our product and culture.

As one of our first core engineers, you’ll own architecture, technology direction, and how we scale our systems and team. You’ll thrive on autonomy and turning ideas into impact in a fast-paced environment with CTO and founders.

Qualifications

• Strong full-stack experience with Java and React.
• Deep understanding of scalability and distributed systems.
• Hands-on AWS experience and DevOps best practices.
• Autonomous self-starter with fast learning.

Responsibilities

• Design and build end-to-end features across the stack (React frontend, Java-based backend, AWS infrastructure).
• Architect scalable systems capable of handling high user traffic and complex data flows.
• Leverage AI tools to augment and write, test, and ship code faster and smarter.
• Collaborate closely with CTO, founders and product to define and deliver new capabilities.
• Drive technical excellence to improve code quality, scalability, observability, and developer velocity.
• Shape our engineering culture through mentorship, tooling choices, and processes that balance speed and quality.

Skills

Full-stack development

Java & Spring Boot

React frontend

Distributed systems

DevOps practices

AI-assisted development

Autonomous mindset

Tools

AWS

CI/CD

DevOps tooling

Job description

Alder is an early-stage startup building the next generation of scalable, AI-augmented applications. We’re small, ambitious, and moving fast, seeking exceptional engineers who want to shape the foundation of our product and culture.

As one of our first core engineers, you’ll own architecture, technology direction, and how we scale our systems and team. You’ll thrive on autonomy and turning ideas into impact in a fast-paced environment with CTO and founders.