Senior Security Architect – AI-Driven IAM & Cloud Security

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

Job summary

Rippling is seeking a Principal Security Engineer to tackle complex cross-cutting security challenges across our technical ecosystem. Reporting directly to the CSO, you will lead high-impact initiatives spanning security, AI, infrastructure, identity, developer experience, internal tooling, and third-party SaaS systems.

This deeply technical, hands-on role moves between architecture and implementation. You will translate ambiguous security problems into cohesive strategy and work alongside

Qualifications

• Significant experience designing, building, and operating complex systems in large-scale cloud or enterprise environments.
• A track record of leading technically complex initiatives involving multiple engineering teams, stakeholders, and cross-functional work.
• Deep expertise in IAM, authentication, authorization, or identity architecture.
• Strong understanding of modern cloud and enterprise architecture, security boundaries, and access systems.
• Recent hands-on engineering experience and ability to prototype, write code, and work with modern tooling.
• Experience building defensive agentic systems and integrating with development and ops processes.
• Ability to move between high-level architecture and detailed implementation decisions.
• High ownership, urgency, and bias toward action in ambiguous environments.
• 10+ years of experience solving complex engineering and security problems.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and implementation of complex security initiatives across multiple engineering teams.
• Incorporate agentic AI technologies into security capabilities across product and infrastructure.
• Help leaders understand risk tradeoffs to inform security decisions.
• Design scalable security systems for identity, cloud infrastructure, internal tooling, and third-party SaaS.
• Translate ambiguous security problems into clear architectures, roadmaps, and executable plans.
• Rationalize requirements across three or more teams into cohesive solutions.
• Partner with senior engineers and leaders to align on critical technical decisions.
• Build prototypes, write production code, and stay hands-on throughout the lifecycle.
• Identify architectural weaknesses and drive durable engineering solutions.
• Establish patterns and frameworks that improve security while enabling speed.
• Raise the technical bar through reviews and mentorship across teams.

Skills

IAM

Authentication

Authorization

Identity architecture

Cloud security

Security architecture

Hands-on coding

Leadership

Cross-functional

Prototyping

Job description

Rippling is seeking a Principal Security Engineer to tackle complex cross-cutting security challenges across our technical ecosystem. Reporting directly to the CSO, you will lead high-impact initiatives spanning security, AI, infrastructure, identity, developer experience, internal tooling, and third-party SaaS systems.

This deeply technical, hands-on role moves between architecture and implementation. You will translate ambiguous security problems into cohesive strategy and work alongside