Senior Platform Architect for AI-Driven Infra

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

Job summary

Rippling seeks a Senior Staff Engineer to shape the architecture of its core platform and AI infrastructure. You will influence hundreds of engineers, define foundational systems, and tackle significant distributed systems challenges at scale.

You will help build AI-driven experiences across HR, IT, and Finance while ensuring secure data interactions and robust performance. This role combines leadership with deep technical execution.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience at Staff/Senior Staff level.
• Deep expertise designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives across large engineering organizations.
• Strong architectural judgment and systems that scale with growth.
• Experience building reliable backend systems in Python, Go, or Java.
• CS fundamentals: distributed systems, concurrency, data modeling, networking.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior technical leader within Rippling's engineering organization.
• Define and drive the long-term architecture of core platform systems powering dozens of products.
• Design scalable, reliable distributed systems that serve as foundational blocks.
• Lead large, cross-organizational initiatives spanning multiple teams.
• Translate business requirements into elegant, durable technical solutions.
• Shape platform strategy and technical direction with senior leaders.
• Build infrastructure enabling AI systems to securely interact with live data.
• Develop core platform primitives to accelerate product development.
• Raise engineering standards via mentorship and reviews.
• Act as DRI for critical technical initiatives.
• Help define platform infra evolution for intelligent software.

Skills

Distributed systems

Staff/Senior Staff leadership

Platform infrastructure

Architectural design

Backend development (Python/Go/Java)

Communication & influence

Ambiguity handling in fast-paced env

Tools

Python

Go

Java

Job description

Rippling seeks a Senior Staff Engineer to shape the architecture of its core platform and AI infrastructure. You will influence hundreds of engineers, define foundational systems, and tackle significant distributed systems challenges at scale.

You will help build AI-driven experiences across HR, IT, and Finance while ensuring secure data interactions and robust performance. This role combines leadership with deep technical execution.