Staff Software Engineer - Data Cloud Applied ML

Rippling; New York (NY); On-site; USD 189,000 - 315,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to build the AI platforms within Data Cloud, shaping the intelligence layer for the unified workforce system. You’ll lead schema retrieval and data retrieval pipelines with scale and reliability.

Based in New York, you’ll partner with AI Platform, Infrastructure, Security, and Product Engineering to drive architecture, standards, and execution across multi-team initiatives.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with distributed systems in production.
• Experience deploying LLMs in production environments.
• Experience optimizing model inference at scale with LLMs and embeddings.
• Strong backend skills in Python, Go, or Java.
• Experience with cloud-native infrastructure (Kubernetes, containers, observability).
• Ability to drive cross-functional technical strategy across teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop a state-of-the-art schema retrieval system over Rippling native and customer schemas.
• Scale Data Cloud AI training pipelines from data generation to training clusters.
• Design and build RL environments for structured and unstructured data retrieval.
• Create agent harnesses enabling product teams to safely deploy AI features.
• Optimize model serving and inference for GPU-scale performance and UX.
• Partner with AI Platform, Infrastructure, Security, and Product Engineering to drive architecture and rollout plans.
• Lead technical direction, mentor engineers, and drive execution across multi-team initiatives.

Skills

Distributed systems

LLMs deployment

Backend languages

Cloud infrastructure

Cross-functional leadership

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Go

Job description

Staff Software Engineer - Data Cloud Applied ML

Rippling New York, New York, United States

About this position

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

Data Cloud is Rippling’s unified data platform that makes operational data across HR, IT, and Finance queryable, governable, and actionable for analytics, reporting, and intelligent product workflows.

We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to build the AI platforms within Data Cloud. At Rippling, you aren’t just building an AI feature; you are architecting the intelligence layer for the unified workforce system. This is a high-impact platform role focused on building state of the art systems for schema retrieval, query planning, and execution. You will partner closely with Rippling’s AI Platform team to define shared primitives for model tuning, inference, evaluation, and development of task specific agent harnesses, while owning Data Cloud-specific capabilities that improve quality, reliability, and scale.

What you will do

• Develop a state of the art schema retrieval system that operates over Rippling native and customer defined schema.
• Implement and scale Data Cloud’s AI training pipelines for data retrieval, from designing data generation to managing training clusters.
• Design and build RL training environments for structured and unstructured data retrieval.
• Develop agent harnesses enabling product teams to safely build AI features on Data Cloud.
• Optimize model serving and inference for scale from GPU level performance to agentic user experiences.
• Partner with AI Platform, Infrastructure, Security, and Product Engineering to drive architecture, standards, and rollout plans.
• Lead technical direction, mentor engineers, and drive execution on multi-team, ambiguous initiatives.

What you will need

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including significant ownership of distributed systems in production.
• Experience post training and deploying LLMs in production environments.
• Experience optimizing model inference at scale, particularly with LLMs and embedding models.
• Strong backend engineering skills in one or more languages such as Python, Go, or Java.
• Experience with cloud-native infrastructure (Kubernetes, container orchestration, observability, reliability engineering).
• Ability to drive cross-functional technical strategy and execute through influence across teams.

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, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected characteristics, Rippling is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need assistance during the hiring process. To request a reasonable accommodation, please email [e-mail]

Rippling highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. For office-based employees (employees who live within a defined radius of a Rippling office), Rippling considers working in the office, at least three days a week under current policy, to be an essential function of the employee's role.

• This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. The salary for US-based employees will be aligned with one of the ranges below based on location; see which tier applies to your location here.
• The pay range for this role is: 189,000 - 315,000 USD per year(US Tier 1)