Senior Software Engineer, Financial Crimes

Ripple; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 168,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Healthcare benefits

Retirement support

Employee giving match

Mobile phone stipend

Generous vacation policy

Industry-leading parental leave

Catered lunches

Job summary

Ripple is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to enhance the Internet of Value by developing infrastructure ensuring compliance across financial transactions. You will design backend services that integrate internal systems with external data providers to facilitate real-time payment screening.

Your expertise in Java and distributed systems will be critical as you navigate a complex regulatory landscape. The position offers competitive salary, generous benefits including wellness reimbursement, and a collaborative workplace environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building production backend systems in Java or comparable JVM languages.
• Strong API design instincts with REST/gRPC.
• Experience with distributed systems patterns.

Responsibilities

• Design and build distributed backend services for real-time compliance screening.
• Architect for resilience to ensure payment flow.
• Develop decision-making tools for compliance operations.

Skills

Java

API design (REST/gRPC)

Distributed systems patterns

Resilience design

Kubernetes

AWS

Job description

At Ripple, we’re building a world where value moves like information does today. It’s big, it’s bold, and we’re already doing it. Through our crypto solutions for financial institutions, businesses, governments and developers, we are improving the global financial system and creating greater economic fairness and opportunity for more people, in more places around the world. And we get to do the best work of our career and grow our skills surrounded by colleagues who have our backs.

If you’re ready to see your impact and unlock incredible career growth opportunities, join us, and build real world value.

The Work

Ripple is building the Internet of Value by building infrastructure that moves money as fast as information moves today. Every payment that flows across our network passes through real‑time financial crimes controls: sanctions screening, wallet risk analysis, transaction monitoring, and travel rule compliance. The Financial Crimes Engineering team builds and operates that layer.

This is the engineering that determines whether payments clear or hold, whether Ripple meets its regulatory obligations across jurisdictions, and whether the network can scale without compromising on compliance. The problem space is genuinely hard: high‑throughput distributed systems, real‑time decisioning, multi‑source coordination across external compliance data providers, regulator‑grade audit trails, and resilience requirements measured against critical regulatory frameworks.

As a Senior Software Engineer on this team, you’ll own meaningful pieces of that platform, including Java‑based compliance orchestration services, the resilience and observability layer that keeps them running through partial dependency failures, and the operator surfaces that let compliance teams make high‑stakes decisions in real time.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build distributed backend services that orchestrate real‑time screening across multiple risk domains, integrating internal Ripple systems with external compliance data providers
• Architect for resilience to keep payments flowing even when upstream dependencies degrade
• Build the decision and data plane that powers compliance operations: alerting, audit trails, case management workflows, investigator tooling
• Own production: define observability, alerting, and incident response
• Partner with Compliance, Global Investigations, and Product to translate evolving regulatory requirements into durable engineering primitives
• Mentor engineers across the team and contribute to architectural direction as the platform scales across Ripple's product line

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years building production backend systems in Java (or comparable JVM languages, Go, Rust)
• Strong API design instincts (REST/gRPC)
• Experience with distributed systems patterns
• Demonstrated comfort with resilience design
• Ability to navigate ambiguity in a regulated environment, turning external requirements (regulator findings, audit obligations, partner asks) into shippable engineering plans
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes, observability tooling (Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or similar), and cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred)
• Experience in fintech, payments, identity, or compliance technology is a plus, but not required if you bring strong systems instincts

Why This Role

• Consequence:your code decides whether real payments clear, in real time, for real customers.
• Complexity: multi-source coordination, sub-second decisioning, regulator-grade auditability, and resilience across the full compliance surface area.
• Breadth: our platform touches every Ripple product line.
• Building, not just maintaining: we’re actively designing the next generation of this platform, built to scale across new jurisdictions and product surfaces.
• Cross-functional weight: you’ll work daily with cross functional teams across the company. The job is technical, but the context is significantly wider than the code.

Benefits

• Competitive salary, bonuses, and equity
• Competitive benefits that cover physical and mental healthcare, retirement, family forming, and family support
• Employee giving match
• Mobile phone stipend
• R&R days so you can rest and recharge
• Generous wellness reimbursement and weekly onsite & virtual programming
• Generous vacation policy - work with your manager to take time off when you need it
• Industry-leading parental leave policies. Family planning benefits.
• Catered lunches, fully-stocked kitchens with premium snacks/beverages, and plenty of fun events

Salary

CA Annual Base Salary Range: $168,000 — $210,000 USD

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement

Ripple is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We do not discriminate against qualified employees or applicants because of race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, sexual identity, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, military status, or any other characteristic protected by local law or ordinance.