Staff Platform Engineer: Scalable Distributed Systems

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling in San Francisco seeks an experienced platform engineer to shape architecture and scale the core product. You will collaborate with Platform Tech Leads and EMs to define how Rippling’s core infrastructure evolves while delivering reliable distributed systems.

This role emphasizes building for growth, prototyping with AI tools, and owning critical infrastructure as part of a pure engineering team. A deep emphasis on developer experience and performance will drive the roadmap and enable

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience on core platform teams.
• Deep distributed systems expertise handling high QPS and data throughput.
• Low-level debugging and systems thinking to diagnose issues.
• Developer-first mindset with scripting and enabling peers.
• Proficiency in Python (or strong willingness to master it).

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical roadmap for architectural areas.
• Think for the future by prototyping with AI tools.
• Solve for scale by reducing unnecessary work and optimizing systems.
• Own the stack and work deeply with infrastructure for distributed systems.
• Operate as a Tech Lead in a pure engineering team with platform partners.

Skills

Distributed systems

8+ years experience

Low-level debugging

Developer first

Python proficiency

Tools

Python

Infrastructure

Job description

Rippling in San Francisco seeks an experienced platform engineer to shape architecture and scale the core product. You will collaborate with Platform Tech Leads and EMs to define how Rippling’s core infrastructure evolves while delivering reliable distributed systems.

This role emphasizes building for growth, prototyping with AI tools, and owning critical infrastructure as part of a pure engineering team. A deep emphasis on developer experience and performance will drive the roadmap and enable