Director of Product, App Platform

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling in San Francisco is seeking a Director of Product, App Platform, to define the strategy for the application platform and app ecosystem. You will turn a set of powerful internal primitives into a coherent developer product that is scalable and reliable for first‑party teams, partners, and external developers.

You will hire and grow PMs, collaborate across engineering, design, GTM, and customer teams, and shape a platform that enables AI-native development and extensible apps at scale.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of product management, engineering, platform, or technical leadership.
• Proven track record building developer-focused products (APIs, platforms, marketplaces).
• Strong fluency with data models, APIs, permissions, and reliability.
• Ability to translate fragmented platform capabilities into a clear roadmap.
• Experience leading PMs and cross-functional collaboration with execs, eng, design, GTM.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous or elevated product areas.

Responsibilities

• Set the App Platform strategy and define how primitives form a scalable developer platform.
• Build APIs, schemas, permissions, tooling, and docs to enable developers.
• Lead the Object Graph and Object Platform roadmap for internal and external use.
• Enable AI-native app creation with safe permissions and deterministic behavior.
• Hire, coach, and develop PMs; lead technically complex product teams.
• Drive ecosystem impact and scale a marketplace for custom apps.

Skills

Product leadership

Developer platforms

APIs & tooling

Team building

Strategic roadmap

Job description

About the role

Rippling is building a developer platform that lets developers build software on top of Rippling, connect Rippling to custom data, and eventually sell applications to Rippling customers. This role will lead the apps pillar of that platform and turn a set of powerful internal primitives into a coherent developer product.

As Director of Product, App Platform, you will define the strategy for Rippling’s application platform and app ecosystem, including the Object Graph, Object Platform, custom apps, workflows, functions, documents, sites, localization, and related capabilities. The right person has built for developers before and can make complex platform architecture feel simple, reliable, and worth building on.

What you will do

• Set the App Platform strategy. Define how Rippling’s app primitives come together into a clear, scalable developer platform.
• Make developers the customer. Build APIs, schemas, permissions, tooling, documentation, observability, and lifecycle experiences that help developers build confidently.
• Lead the Object Graph and Object Platform roadmap. Shape the shared data and platform foundation that first-party teams, solutions teams, customers, and external developers build on.
• Enable AI-native app creation. Make the platform usable by AI coding agents through machine-readable interfaces, deterministic behavior, safe permissions, and actionable errors.
• Build and lead the team. Hire, coach, and develop product leaders for a broad, technically complex, strategically important product area.
• Drive ecosystem impact. Help scale custom apps and create the foundation for third-party developers to build and sell software on Rippling.

What you will need

• 12+ years of product management, engineering, platform, or technical product leadership experience.
• A track record of building substantial products for developers, such as developer platforms, APIs, infrastructure products, app platforms, marketplaces, workflow platforms, or data platforms.
• Strong technical fluency across data models, APIs, permissions, systems boundaries, reliability, tooling, and developer workflows.
• Excellent product judgment and the ability to turn fragmented platform capabilities into a clear product strategy and roadmap.
• Experience leading product teams, hiring and developing PMs, and operating across executive, engineering, design, GTM, and customer-facing stakeholders.
• Comfort creating clarity in ambiguous, early, or newly elevated product areas.
• Nice to have: experience with third-party developer ecosystems, app marketplaces, AI-native development workflows, coding agents, object graphs, data clouds, or enterprise application platforms.

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.