Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll Platform

Rippling; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 345,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

In-office collaboration culture

Job summary

Rippling in Seattle, Washington is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager for the Payroll Platform to lead a high-impact backend team building a scalable payroll foundation.

You will architect for scale, manage end‑to‑end HR data flows, and mentor engineering managers while collaborating with onboarding and payroll pods.

The role offers a competitive US salary range of 207,000–345,000 USD per year, with equity and in-office collaboration as a core part of Rippling’s culture.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• 5+ years in a senior leadership role.
• Experience building and scaling distributed backend systems.
• Strong leadership and people management skills.
• Excellent communication across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture for scale of the Run Management engine and data throughput.
• Oversee end-to-end HR inputs to the calculation engine for accurate outputs in payroll workflows.
• Drive platform reliability, systems design, and backend efficiency.
• Coordinate across Onboarding and Payroll Processing pods to align Run Management as a seamless interface.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Senior leadership experience

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

Coaching Engineering Managers

Backend systems

Cross-team communication

Job description

Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll Platform

Rippling Seattle, Washington, United States

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

As the Senior Engineering Manager for the Payroll Platform team, you’ll lead a high-impact engineering team for building the foundational platform within payroll organization that enable and support critical flows around payroll processing, approvals, corrections and many more.

In addition, this role will have a significant impact on Rippling’s growth and success, and make technical and business decisions which will shape the future of the product and company. We are looking for someone who takes immense pride in building excellent scalable products, building winning teams and being able to rally these towards a vision, and can attract and retain top talent.

What You'll Do

• Architect for Scale: Lead the predominant backend strategy to evolve the Run Management engine, ensuring it can handle massive data throughput and complex orchestration logic.
• Orchestrate Complexity: Manage the flow of raw HR inputs into the calculation engine, ensuring the "end-to-end tail engine" produces accurate, reliable outputs for high-stakes financial processes.
• Drive Platform Excellence: Operate as a pure platform leader. You will focus on systems design, infrastructure reliability, and backend efficiency rather than traditional consumer-facing product features.
• Collaborate Across Charters: Act as a strong communicator and bridge between the Onboarding and Payroll Processing pods, ensuring the Run Management layer serves as a seamless interface.

Who You Are

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5+ years in a senior leadership capacity.
• Scale Veteran: You understand the nuances of high-concurrency systems and distributed platform architecture.
• Infrastructure Mindset: You have a background in building robust systems on top of cloud infrastructure and have ideally managed data platform or infrastructure-heavy teams.
• Leader of Leaders: You have significant experience coaching and developing Engineering Managers, not just individual contributors.
• Backend Specialist: You possess deep technical expertise in backend systems and orchestration patterns.
• Strong Communicator: You can navigate a complex organizational structure, managing multiple charters and stakeholders with clarity and precision.

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.

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