Staff Software Engineer

Hidden Road; United States; On-site; USD 212,000 - 265,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity

Comprehensive benefits

Flexible in-office days

Professional development budget

Job summary

Ripple seeks a staff-level backend engineer to modernize and scale its onboarding platform. You will design distributed backend services, migrate logic from Salesforce, and build robust data flows that support multiple Ripple products, from Payments to Custody to Identity.

You will mentor engineers, shape cross-team architecture, and partner with Product, Compliance, and Engineering to drive company-wide technical direction. This role offers significant impact and a path to platform leadership.

Qualifications

• Deep backend engineering experience in modern, cloud-native distributed systems.
• Willingness to work with frontend frameworks for full-stack capability.
• Proven track record delivering large-scale systems in complex environments.
• Strong API design and integration skills (REST and/or gRPC).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS).
• Leadership skills: set technical direction, mentor others, influence cross-team decisions.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of distributed, cloud-native backend services powering onboarding across Ripple's product suite.
• Partner with Product, Compliance, and other engineering teams to design scalable orchestration and data pipelines.
• Migrate core onboarding logic out of Salesforce into resilient, observable services and a dedicated persistence layer.
• Build platform capabilities enabling faster onboarding with fewer customer touchpoints, while preserving trust and compliance.
• Contribute to foundational data modeling for Ripple's identity platform (ownership of Identity moving to another team).
• Champion engineering excellence in code quality, testing, and operational practices.

Skills

Backend development

Cloud-native

REST/gRPC APIs

Leadership/mentoring

Cross-team collaboration

Frontend exposure

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

Kafka

SNS/SQS

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:

At Ripple, the Customer Onboarding Platform is where every customer's journey begins - and it's about to get a full-scale rebuild.

We recently became a horizontal platform team serving all Ripple products. Our next chapter:

• Unwinding years of Salesforce-bound logic into modern, engineering-owned backend services.
• Integrating best-in-class vendors like Persona for KYC/KYB, while building the surrounding orchestration, data flows, and service layer.
• Designing the systems and data model that will make onboarding scalable, observable, and reliable across products.

If you're a Staff-level engineer who thrives on modernizing fragile systems, building robust services around vendor integrations, and driving architecture at company-wide scale, this is your opportunity.

Why This Role Matters:

Onboarding is where customers form their first impression of Ripple, and where trust is earned. As the technical anchor for a small, high-impact team, you will:

• Build for impact - Everything you create will serve multiple Ripple products, from Payments to Custody to Stablecoin.
• Start from zero - Design and build new backend services from the ground up to power onboarding across products.
• Tackle the hard stuff - Unwind years of technical debt while designing systems built to last.
• Shape Ripple’s architecture - Partner with Product, Compliance, and Engineering to influence company-wide technical direction.
• Scale the right way - Mentor engineers and grow a high-performing team, with direct executive backing.

This isn't just about writing code, it's about designing how Ripple's onboarding platform will work for years to come.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

• Lead the design and development of distributed, cloud-native backend services that power onboarding across Ripple's product suite.
• Partner with Product, Compliance, and other engineering teams to design scalable orchestration and data pipelines.
• Migrate core onboarding logic out of Salesforce into resilient, observable services and a dedicated persistence layer.
• Build platform capabilities that enable faster onboarding with fewer customer touchpoints - while preserving trust and compliance.
• Contribute to foundational data modeling work that will feed into Ripple's future identity platform (while ownership of Identity will move to a dedicated team).
• Champion engineering excellence in code quality, testing, and operational practices.
• Mentor engineers and help grow a lean, high-impact team.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING:

Required

• Deep backend engineering experience in modern, cloud-native, distributed systems.
• Exposure and willingness to frontend frameworks (React, Vue, etc.) for full-stack capability.
• Proven track record designing and delivering large-scale systems in complex environments.
• Strong API design and integration skills (REST and/or gRPC).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS).
• Comfort navigating and reducing technical debt while delivering business value.
• Leadership skills: can set technical direction, mentor others, and influence cross-team decisions.

Preferred (But Not Required)

• Experience with our current stack: Java + Spring Boot.
• We welcome candidates from other backend stacks (Go, Kotlin, C#, Python, Rust, etc.) who can quickly learn JVM technologies.
• Event-driven architecture (Kafka, SNS/SQS, etc.).
• Domain knowledge in fintech, regtech, KYC/KYB, identity verification, or compliance-heavy systems.

Why You'll Love Working Here:

• Impact: The systems you build will be used across all Ripple products, touching every new customer.
• Technical Challenge: You'll lead a high-leverage migration and design work that matters.
• Growth: Opportunity to shape a horizontal platform team from the ground up.
• Collaboration: Partner with sharp, motivated colleagues across engineering, product, and compliance.

If you want to help replace a fragile, business-critical system with a scalable platform that will serve every Ripple customer for years to come, we'd love to talk.

Other common names for this role:

For positions that will be based in CA, the annual salary range for this position is below. Actual salaries may vary based on numerous factors including, among other things, an individual applicant's experience and qualifications for the position. This range does not include equity or additional compensation, such as bonuses or commissions.

CA Annual Base Salary Range

$212,000 - $265,000 USD

WHO WE ARE:

Do Your Best Work

• The opportunity to build in a fast-paced start-up environment with experienced industry leaders
• A learning environment where you can dive deep into the latest technologies and make an impact. A professional development budget to support other modes of learning.
• Thrives in an environment where no matter what race, ethnicity, gender, origin, or culture they identify with, every employee is a respected, valued, and empowered part of the team.
• In-office collaboration for moments that matter is important to our culture, and we give managers and teams the flexibility to decide which 10+ days a month they come in.
• Bi-weekly all-company meeting - business updates and ask me anything style discussion with our Leadership Team
• We come together for moments that matter which include team offsites, team bonding activities, happy hours and more!

Take Control of Your Finances

• 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

Take Care of Yourself

• 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

Benefits listed above are for full-time employees.

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.

Please find our UK/EU Applicant Privacy Notice and our California Applicant Privacy Notice for reference.