Staff Software Engineer

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, Inc.; Westchester (IL); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

401k with company match (100% up to 4%

15 days PTO per year

Job summary

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, Inc. is hiring a Staff Software Engineer, AI Enablement.

You will design secure agent access, manage containerized environments, and codify standards into practical tools with strong governance. You’ll drive metrics, collaborate across CI/CD and security teams, and own architecture across initiatives to scale AI-enabled software. You will shape the team’s direction from day one, influencing tooling, documentation, and rollout strategies with a focus on reliability and

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering at a staff level.
• Experience contributing to internal developer platforms or paved road tooling.
• Deep, hands-on CI/CD pipeline setup and operation with quality gates.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Strong observability knowledge (logging, tracing, metrics) with tooling.
• Experience with Python, Java, or Go; ability to reason across a stack.
• Proven track record of adoption via rollout and good documentation.
• Curiosity and ability to learn in a fast-moving AI space.
• Strong communication to explain trade-offs to engineers and stakeholders.
• Ability to translate evolving problems into concrete technical approaches.

Responsibilities

• Design and build secure, governed agent access to internal tools and data with credentials and audit trails.
• Create and operate containerized environments for agents with isolation and reproducibility.
• Turn standards into usable tools and enforceable conventions for teams.
• Establish baselines and metrics for speed, quality, and cost with data.
• Partner with CI/CD, security, and platform teams to integrate workflows.
• Harden releases with tests, documentation, and support plans.
• Decide when to reuse tools vs build anew with teammates.
• Own architecture across initiatives and shape priority with stakeholders.
• Collaborate with engineers to solve ambiguous problems as a team.

Skills

Staff level software engineering

CI/CD pipelines

Kubernetes

Observability

Python/Java/Go

Developer platforms

Documentation & rollout

Communication

Problem solving

Collaboration

Tools

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Job description

RB Global (NYSE: RBA) (TSX: RBA) is a leading, omnichannel marketplace that provides value-added insights, services and transaction solutions for buyers and sellers of commercial assets and vehicles worldwide. Through its auction sites in 13 countries and digital platform, RB Global serves customers in more than 170 countries across a variety of asset classes, including automotive, commercial transportation, construction, government surplus, lifting and material handling, energy, mining and agriculture.

The company’s marketplace brands include Ritchie Bros., the world’s largest auctioneer of commercial assets and vehicles offering online bidding, and IAA, a leading global digital marketplace connecting vehicle buyers and sellers. RB Global’s portfolio of brands also includes Rouse Services, which provides a complete end-to-end asset management, data-driven intelligence and performance benchmarking system; SmartEquip, an innovative technology platform that supports customers’ management of the equipment lifecycle and integrates parts procurement with both OEMs and dealers; Xcira, a leader in live simulcast auction technologies; and Veritread, an online marketplace for heavy haul transport.

RB Global full-time employees are offered medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurances. Employees are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan and RB Global will match 100% for the first 4% contributed. Employees will also receive 15 days of PTO each year.

Job Description

Staff Software Engineer, AI Enablement

RB Global is building the team that makes agentic software development standard, governed, and measurable across the company. We want every engineer to be able to delegate work to an agent and trust the result, with the right standards, guardrails, and visibility built into the path itself. This new team exists to make that the default: composing what already exists wherever it's good enough, and building only what doesn't. It's engineering excellence applied specifically to how we build software with AI.

We're hiring the founding engineers for this team. You'll be shaping the team's scope, standards, and first deliverables from day one, not inheriting someone else's roadmap.

About The Role

• Help design and build secure, governed ways for agents to reach internal tools and data, with the scoping, credentials, and audit trails that make that access trustworthy.
• Build and run the containerized environments agents work in, where things like isolation, reproducibility, and model/cost choices are actually controlled.
• Take the team's engineering standards and conventions and turn them into something tools and agents can actually consume and follow, not just documentation that drifts out of date.
• Establish the baselines and metrics the team doesn't have yet, so claims about speed, quality, and cost are backed by numbers.
• Partner with CI/CD, security, and platform teams to plug agent workflows into tools the company already uses, rather than reinventing them.
• Review and harden what the team ships with the same rigor you'd apply to any system other engineers depend on: tests, documentation, and a clear plan for who supports it.
• Work with teammates to decide what the team takes on, and when to adopt an existing tool versus build something new.
• Own the design and architecture of the solutions you build, and work across multiple initiatives and team boundaries as the team's scope grows.
• Partner with the team's technical product owner and stakeholders across the company to shape direction, priorities, and the stories that turn ideas into delivered work.
• Work closely with the other engineers on the team to reason through ambiguous problems together, rather than any one person directing the work.

Qualifications

• Significant professional software engineering experience at a staff level of scope and judgment(8+ years of professional experience), including time spent setting technical direction collaboratively rather than solo.
• Experience contributing to internal developer platforms, "paved road" tooling, or developer-enablement work, since this team exists to make other engineers more effective.
• Deep, hands-on experience setting up and operating CI/CD pipelines, including defining and enforcing quality gates as code.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes or comparable container orchestration, and comfort owning services from build through production operation.
• Strong, practical knowledge of observability, such as structured logging, tracing, and metrics/dashboards (e.g., Datadog, OpenTelemetry, or similar), and using it to answer "is this actually working?"
• Enterprise-level experience with Python, Java, Go or similar high-level languages; we care more about your ability to reason across a stack and pick up what's needed than mastery of any one language.
• A track record of building things that other engineers adopt voluntarily, because you think about rollout, documentation, and the path of least resistance, not just whether the code works.
• Curiosity and a genuine desire to learn: this space is moving fast, the right answers aren't settled yet, and the best candidates will enjoy figuring them out rather than expecting a playbook.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical trade-offs clearly to teammates, other engineering teams, and stakeholders who weren't in the room when the decision was made.
• Comfort translating ambiguous or evolving problems into a concrete technical approach, since much of this team's early work won't have a settled playbook to follow.

Nice To Have

• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, agentic coding tools), and even better, experience building platforms, tooling, or guardrails around them.
• Experience building AI tooling, personal or professional, and a natural enjoyment of experimenting with new approaches.
• Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or similar tool-access and governance patterns.

Job Info

• Job Identification 12194
• Posting Date 11/10/2026, 10:50 PM
• Locations 2 Westbrook Corporate Ctr, Westchester, IL, 60154, US (Hybrid)