diff --git a/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam.py b/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam.py
index ee2c29efb7..97a318fb36 100644
--- a/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam.py
+++ b/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam.py
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
 # limitations under the License.
 # ==============================================================================
 """Rectified Adam (RAdam) optimizer."""
+import warnings
 
 import tensorflow as tf
 from tensorflow_addons.utils.types import FloatTensorLike
@@ -79,7 +80,10 @@ def __init__(
         weight_decay: FloatTensorLike = 0.0,
         amsgrad: bool = False,
         sma_threshold: FloatTensorLike = 5.0,
-        total_steps: int = 0,
+        # float for total_steps is here to be able to load models created before
+        # https://github.com/tensorflow/addons/pull/1375 was merged. It should be
+        # removed for Addons 0.11.
+        total_steps: Union[int, float] = 0,
         warmup_proportion: FloatTensorLike = 0.1,
         min_lr: FloatTensorLike = 0.0,
         name: str = "RectifiedAdam",
@@ -123,7 +127,16 @@ def __init__(
         self._set_hyper("decay", self._initial_decay)
         self._set_hyper("weight_decay", weight_decay)
         self._set_hyper("sma_threshold", sma_threshold)
-        self._set_hyper("total_steps", float(total_steps))
+        if isinstance(total_steps, float):
+            warnings.warn(
+                "The parameter `total_steps` passed to the __init__ of RectifiedAdam "
+                "is a float. This behavior is deprecated and in Addons 0.11, this "
+                "will raise an error. Use an int instead. If you get this message "
+                "when loading a model, save it again and the `total_steps` parameter "
+                "will automatically be converted to a int.",
+                DeprecationWarning,
+            )
+        self._set_hyper("total_steps", int(total_steps))
         self._set_hyper("warmup_proportion", warmup_proportion)
         self._set_hyper("min_lr", min_lr)
         self.epsilon = epsilon or tf.keras.backend.epsilon()
diff --git a/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam_test.py b/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam_test.py
index 5950fcdd31..73e0a56b6b 100644
--- a/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam_test.py
+++ b/tensorflow_addons/optimizers/rectified_adam_test.py
@@ -172,5 +172,14 @@ def test_get_config(self):
         self.assertEqual(config["total_steps"], 0)
 
 
+def test_serialization():
+    optimizer = RectifiedAdam(
+        lr=1e-3, total_steps=10000, warmup_proportion=0.1, min_lr=1e-5,
+    )
+    config = tf.keras.optimizers.serialize(optimizer)
+    new_optimizer = tf.keras.optimizers.deserialize(config)
+    assert new_optimizer.get_config() == optimizer.get_config()
+
+
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     sys.exit(pytest.main([__file__]))