Senior Engineering Manager, Documents Platform

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 345,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager for the Documents Platform to lead a team building the core backend platform powering document-centric experiences across Rippling. You will shape APIs, services, data models, and distributed systems that enable document storage, workflows, and signatures for internal products, AI workflows, and external developers.

You will guide architectural decisions, collaborate with product teams, and ensure a scalable, reliable platform with strong

Qualifications

• Significant engineering leadership experience overseeing backend or platform teams.
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals with architecture experience.
• Experience operating large-scale platforms, infrastructure, or foundational backend systems.
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems, databases, data layers, APIs, and scalable service architectures.
• Experience designing abstractions and reusable platform capabilities rather than product-specific solutions.
• Track record of leading technically complex, cross-functional initiatives with broad impact.
• Strong judgment on scalability, reliability, system boundaries, API design, and long-term tradeoffs.
• Ability to move between technical strategy, hands-on architectural leadership, people management, and execution.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Documents Platform team, focusing on scalable backend and platform capabilities.
• Define the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap to make document features a reusable platform primitive.
• Build scalable APIs and backend services for internal product teams, AI workflows, and external developers.
• Evolve document infrastructure into a generalized platform serving multiple product areas.
• Own complex technical decisions about distributed systems, data models, storage, APIs, reliability, and scalability.
• Engage in design and architecture while enabling engineers to execute independently at a high level.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate requirements into durable platform capabilities.
• Create clear abstractions and interfaces to accelerate teams without rebuilding underlying infrastructure.
• Build for long-term scale, extensibility, reliability, and strong developer experience.
• Hire, coach, and develop a high-performing engineering team with high standards.

Skills

Backend leadership

Distributed systems

Architecture design

People management

API design

System design

Cross-functional collaboration

Technical strategy

Job description

Senior Engineering Manager, Documents Platform

About this position

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

Rippling is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead our Documents Platform team. This team is building the foundational backend platform that enables document‑centric experiences across Rippling—creating a flexible, scalable set of capabilities that can be used by our own product teams, AI‑powered workflows, and, over time, third‑party developers.

This is a high‑impact platform leadership role. Rather than owning a single product surface, your team will build the APIs, services, data models, and distributed systems that make documents a first‑class platform primitive across Rippling. The platform will support a broad range of use cases—from document storage and management to workflows involving generation, routing, completion, and signatures—while abstracting away the underlying complexity for the teams building on top of it.

You’ll lead a team of engineers while helping define the technical vision and evolution of the platform. The ideal leader combines strong people management with deep technical judgment and is comfortable operating close to architecture, system design, and implementation. This is an opportunity to build infrastructure that sits in the critical path of products and workflows across Rippling and becomes part of the technical fabric of the company.

What you will do

• Lead and develop a team of backend and platform engineers responsible for Rippling’s core Documents Platform.
• Define the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for making document capabilities a reusable platform primitive across Rippling.
• Build scalable APIs and backend services that allow internal product teams, AI and agentic workflows, and external developers to build document‑based experiences.
• Drive the evolution of existing document infrastructure into a generalized platform that can serve use cases across Rippling rather than being tightly coupled to any one product area.
• Own complex technical decisions across distributed systems, data models, storage, APIs, reliability, and scalability.
• Stay deeply engaged in technical design and architecture while creating the environment for engineers to independently execute at a high level.
• Partner closely with product and engineering teams across Rippling to understand their requirements and translate them into durable platform capabilities.
• Establish clear abstractions and platform interfaces that allow teams to move quickly without needing to understand or rebuild the underlying document infrastructure.
• Build for long‑term scale, extensibility, reliability, and developer experience as adoption of the platform grows.
• Hire, coach, and develop a high‑performing engineering team while setting a high bar for technical quality and execution.

What you will need

• Significant engineering leadership experience, including experience managing and developing high‑performing backend or platform engineering teams.
• A strong technical foundation in backend engineering, with the depth to actively participate in architecture and system design discussions.
• Experience building and operating large‑scale platforms, infrastructure, or foundational backend systems used by multiple products or engineering teams.
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems, databases, data layers, APIs, and scalable service architectures.
• Experience designing abstractions and reusable platform capabilities rather than building exclusively for a single product or use case.
• A track record of leading technically complex, cross‑functional initiatives with broad organizational impact.
• Strong judgment around scalability, reliability, system boundaries, API design, and long‑term architectural tradeoffs.
• The ability to move between technical strategy, hands‑on architectural leadership, people management, and execution.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, particularly when working with multiple engineering and product teams that depend on your platform.
• Experience with document infrastructure, developer platforms, workflow systems, or similarly complex platform domains is a plus.
• Experience building infrastructure that powers AI or agentic workflows is a plus.

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.

Salary Information

The pay range for this role is: 207,000 - 345,000 USD per year (US San Francisco Bay Area)