Senior Staff Platform Engineer, AI & Distributed Systems

Rippling; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is hiring a Senior Staff Engineer to shape the architecture of Rippling's core platform and AI infrastructure. You will tackle distributed systems at scale, drive technical strategy, and influence hundreds of engineers across the organization.

You will lead foundational platform initiatives and build systems that securely interact with live data, enabling AI-driven product experiences. This is a deeply technical, high-impact leadership role.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience operating at the Staff or Senior Staff level.
• Deep expertise designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong experience developing platform infrastructure, shared services, or foundational engineering systems.
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives across large engineering organizations.
• Strong architectural judgment and a track record of designing systems that scale with both business growth and organizational complexity.
• Experience building highly reliable backend systems in languages such as Python, Go, Java, or similar.
• Strong computer science fundamentals, including distributed systems, concurrency, data modeling, networking, and systems design.
• Experience operating in fast-paced, high-growth environments where ambiguity is high and execution speed matters.
• Exceptional communication and influence skills, with the ability to align engineers, engineering leaders, and executive stakeholders.
• A product mindset and passion for building platforms that unlock leverage for both developers and customers.
• Excitement about the role AI will play in transforming enterprise software and the infrastructure required to support it.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior technical leader within Rippling's engineering organization.
• Define and drive the long-term architecture of core platform systems that power dozens of products and hundreds of engineers.
• Design highly scalable, reliable, and extensible distributed systems that serve as foundational building blocks across the company.
• Lead large, cross-organizational initiatives that span multiple teams, products, and technical domains.
• Translate ambiguous business and product requirements into elegant, durable technical solutions.
• Drive architectural decisions that impact the future evolution of Rippling's Business Operating System.
• Partner closely with senior engineering leaders to shape platform strategy and technical direction.
• Build the infrastructure that enables AI systems to securely interact with live business data, workflows, permissions, and operational systems.
• Develop core platform primitives that accelerate product development across the company.
• Raise the engineering bar through mentorship, design reviews, technical leadership, and operational excellence.
• Act as the directly responsible individual (DRI) for some of the company's most critical technical initiatives.
• Help define how platform infrastructure evolves to support increasingly intelligent and autonomous software systems.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Technical leadership

Architectural judgment

Communication skills

Product mindset

AI infrastructure interest

Tools

Python

Go

Java

Backend systems

Job description

Rippling is hiring a Senior Staff Engineer to shape the architecture of Rippling's core platform and AI infrastructure. You will tackle distributed systems at scale, drive technical strategy, and influence hundreds of engineers across the organization.

You will lead foundational platform initiatives and build systems that securely interact with live data, enabling AI-driven product experiences. This is a deeply technical, high-impact leadership role.