Staff Software Engineer Data Cloud Applied ML

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

Were hiring a Staff Software Engineer to build the AI platforms within Data Cloud. At Rippling you arent 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 Ripplings 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.

• Develop a state of the art schema retrieval system that operates over Rippling native and customer defined schema.
• Implement and scale Data Clouds 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.

• 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.

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

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 employees 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.

A variety of factors are considered when determining someones compensationincluding a candidates professional background experience and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed below.

Required Experience:

Staff IC