Product Strategy and Operations Lead

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

Job summary

Rippling is seeking a Product Strategy and Operations Lead in San Francisco to align product strategy with execution. You will partner with senior leaders across Product, Engineering, and Design to build rigorous operating systems, measurement infrastructure, and planning that scales as Rippling delivers innovation at speed.

The role focuses on three pillars: sustaining high‑velocity product releases, validating post‑launch success, and designing planning systems aligned with strategic

Qualifications

• 10+ years in product operations, strategy, or related field at a high‑growth tech company.
• Ability to understand complex, technical products and communicate value to non‑technical audiences.
• Deep knowledge of the full software development lifecycle and process improvement.
• Thrives in a fast‑paced environment; works independently and cross‑functionally.
• Passion for solving ambiguous strategic problems and driving end‑to‑end execution.
• Experience leading complex, cross‑functional projects with multiple stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead annual planning for Rippling EPD, improving processes and automating workflows.
• Define weekly/monthly business rhythms and roadmapping processes for EPD.
• Own end‑to‑end release management, readiness reviews, and risk mitigation.
• Build and accelerate the Launch Calendar to improve pace and quality of releases.
• Create a post‑launch product adoption framework to ensure business outcomes.
• Develop go‑to‑market feedback loops and continuously update market views.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering/Science to support fast analysis and insights.
• Align EPD team health and capacity with staffing for high‑impact bets.
• Ensure cross‑functional accountability without formal authority.

Skills

Product operations

Strategic planning

Cross‑functional leadership

Data‑driven decisions

Software lifecycle

Job description

About Rippling

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third‑party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.

We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.

About the role

As a Product Strategy and Operations Lead, you’ll work closely with senior leaders across Product, Engineering, and Design to establish and continuously improve the operational systems that connect product strategy to execution. This is a unique opportunity to lead a high‑impact team helping Rippling deliver innovation at scale while driving operational excellence across the product development lifecycle.

We're looking for a leader to build and run Rippling's Product Strategy & Operations function. This is a senior, cross‑functional role that sits at the heart of the EPD organization and works in close partnership with the CPO, CTO, EPD Leads, GTM leadership, and Finance.

You will be responsible for three core pillars: building the rigor necessary to sustain a high‑velocity of product releases, establishing the measurement infrastructure to validate product success post‑launch, and designing the planning systems that ensure our product roadmap remains aligned with our strategic objectives.

This is a strategic leadership position for someone who thinks deeply about products and markets, but obsesses about building world‑class operating systems, and uses data to drive decisions that matter.

What you will do

• Run planning for Rippling EPD. You'll own and execute how Rippling EPD does annual planning including multiple offshoot workstreams, and the frameworks leadership uses to make decisions. Continuous improvement of existing processes, automating manual workflows and helping us redesign lighter ways to do the work in the future
• Own EPD business rhythms: weekly operating reviews, monthly business reviews, planning cycles, and roadmap processes by defining minimum viable process for each.
• Establish critical processes that govern the product development lifecycle. This role owns the health of the product development lifecycle: how requirements move into build, how releases are planned and validated, how experimentation (A/B testing) is designed and read out, and how quality is verified before anything reaches go to market teams and customers.
• Ensure Product releases flow into our Launch Calendar and accelerate the pace and quality of releases to market.
• Establish a product adoption framework — a structured post‑launch process that goes beyond the launch to ensure new features and products are actually adopted, drive the intended business outcomes, and generate learnings that feed the next iteration.
• Develop and maintain go‑to‑market and customer feedback loops that give product leaders a continuously updated view of the market landscape.
• Partner with Data Engineering and Data Science to ensure the analytical infrastructure (data pipelines, warehouse models, tooling) supports the speed of analysis our business requires.
• Partner with EPD leads to maintain team health, capacity visibility, and resource allocation so that the right bets are properly staffed and execution risk is surfaced early.
• Own end‑to‑end release management, including readiness reviews, release communications, and risk mitigation.
• Success depends on the individual’s ability to work cross‑functionally and hold engineering, product, and design partners accountable to committed deliverables without formal authority over them.

What you will need

• 10+ years in product operations, business operations, strategy, or a closely adjacent function inside a high‑growth technology company.
• Ability to understand complex, technical products and articulate their value to non‑technical audiences.
• Deep familiarity with the full software development lifecycle — you understand how EPD teams plan, build, and ship, and have experience improving those processes.
• Ability to thrive in a fast‑paced environment. Demonstrated ability to work independently, autonomously, and cross‑functionally.
• Passion for structuring and solving highly ambiguous strategic problems and owning end‑to‑end execution of solutions.
• Experience leading complex, cross‑functional projects with multiple functional stakeholders.
• Past experience working at the intersection of product and go‑to‑market teams in a software company.
• Strong oral and written communication skills, with a proven ability to work effectively with multiple, cross‑functional stakeholders, including users.

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.

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone’s compensation–including a candidate’s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed below.