Global Payroll Backend Architect

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 189,000 - 331,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is seeking an experienced software engineer to join the Payroll Run Management team. You will architect and deliver scalable backend features for a global payroll engine, supporting 70+ countries with complex tax rules and integrations.

You will own end-to-end delivery from design through production and will mentor engineers while raising the bar for quality, testing, and observability. This is an on-site role in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer, with a proven track record of technical leadership and driving org-wide impact.
• Expertise in building large-scale, distributed backend systems. Strong proficiency in Python and Django is highly preferred.
• Experience managing the complete project lifecycle, transforming intricate ideas and ambiguous requirements into successful launches independently.
• Deep expertise in system architecture, data modeling, and building core services with clean abstractions.
• A keen product sense and a passion for advocating for the customer, with experience building robust systems that directly impact business-critical flows.
• Outstanding capacity to convey intricate technical concepts clearly and precisely, both in writing and verbally, to diverse functional teams.
• Experience with MongoDB or similar NoSQL databases is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical architecture for the next generation of our global payroll calculation engine, designing scalable frameworks that support operations across multiple countries.
• Own the end-to-end delivery of high-impact, complex features, from initial design and technical specifications through to production deployment and monitoring.
• Drive the technical roadmap for the Calculations team, identifying and tackling performance bottlenecks, reliability improvements, and architectural refactors.
• Take on ambiguous technical challenges and turn them into concrete, actionable plans for the team.
• Exercise expert technical judgment in building scalable, maintainable, and extensible systems, ensuring data integrity across complex services.
• Raise the engineering bar for the entire organization by mentoring senior and junior engineers, leading in-depth design reviews, and championing best practices for code quality, testing, and observability.
• Collaborate across functions with Product Management, HRIS, and other engineering leaders to deliver cohesive, platform-wide solutions.

Skills

Distributed backend systems

Python

Django

System architecture

Tools

MongoDB

Job description

Rippling is seeking an experienced software engineer to join the Payroll Run Management team. You will architect and deliver scalable backend features for a global payroll engine, supporting 70+ countries with complex tax rules and integrations.

You will own end-to-end delivery from design through production and will mentor engineers while raising the bar for quality, testing, and observability. This is an on-site role in the San Francisco Bay Area.