Payroll Calculation Systems Lead – Enterprise Platform

Rippling (Netherlands); Boston (MA); On-site; USD 189,000 - 315,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Competitive salary

Job summary

Rippling is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Payroll Calculation team, designing and scaling complex payroll systems for global scale. You will own architectural direction, write critical production code, and drive major initiatives across multiple teams.

The role emphasizes correctness, auditability, and performance in distributed systems, with opportunities to expand native payroll across countries. Equity, benefits, and a competitive salary are part of the package.

Qualifications

• Staff-level experience designing and scaling complex production systems where correctness and auditability are critical.
• Strong engineering fundamentals across architecture, data modeling, distributed systems, databases, caching, and reliability.
• A track record of setting technical direction and leading complex initiatives across multiple teams.
• Strong product judgment and the ability to connect platform decisions to customer outcomes.
• Excellent communication skills and comfort driving alignment across engineering, product, and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and technical strategy for Rippling’s payroll calculation systems.
• Write critical production code and lead from the front on high-impact technical initiatives.
• Design frameworks that make payroll logic configurable, versioned, testable, explainable, scalable, and easy to debug.
• Leverage AI to make payroll logic easier to build, validate, explain, and operate, without compromising accuracy, auditability, or control.
• Build systems that support enterprise-scale payroll for large employers with complex legal-entity structures and approval workflows.
• Help expand Rippling’s native payroll capabilities across new countries and jurisdictions.
• Drive improvements in distributed systems, database performance, caching, reliability, and operability.
• Partner cross-functionally with product, design, payroll operations, HRIS, and other engineering teams to deliver end-to-end customer outcomes.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers across payroll calculation areas such as platform, earnings, deductions, taxes, and jurisdiction-specific logic.

Skills

Staff-level experience

Architecture design

Distributed systems

Data modeling

Reliability engineering

Leadership across teams

Product judgment

Communication skills

Job description

Rippling is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Payroll Calculation team, designing and scaling complex payroll systems for global scale. You will own architectural direction, write critical production code, and drive major initiatives across multiple teams.

The role emphasizes correctness, auditability, and performance in distributed systems, with opportunities to expand native payroll across countries. Equity, benefits, and a competitive salary are part of the package.