Staff Software Engineer - Core Experience

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling in San Francisco is seeking an experienced backend engineer to own scalable systems powering Core Experience, including onboarding, self-serve purchasing, and the shared platform primitives that every product relies on.

You will partner with product and design to shape features end-to-end, design robust APIs, emphasize performance and observability, and create infrastructure that other teams can rely on to move fast at scale.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering with backend focus.
• Design for scale, fault tolerance, and correctness from the start.
• Strong collaboration with product and design to shape features end-to-end.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL data modeling and API design.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend systems that power Core Experience's highest‑leverage surfaces: onboarding flows, self‑serve purchasing, and the shared platform primitives other product teams rely on
• Take technical ownership end‑to‑end, from schema design and API contracts to performance, reliability, and observability in production
• Work directly with product and design to shape how features get built, not just implement what's handed to you
• Build for scale and reuse: the systems you design will be consumed by other engineering teams across Rippling, so correctness, documentation, and thoughtful abstraction matter

Skills

Backend systems

Scale & fault tolerance

SQL/NoSQL data modeling

Python/Go/Java

API design & contracts

Job description

About the role:

The Core Experience team owns how companies and users first encounter Rippling, and how they operate within it every day. We build the onboarding flows that take companies from zero to running on Rippling, the self-serve growth infrastructure that lets customers discover and purchase products without a sales touch, and the foundational surfaces (home dashboard, navigation, user management, and company settings) that every Rippling user touches regardless of which product they're in.

We operate at the intersection of product surface and platform infrastructure: building reusable components that dozens of product teams depend on, scaling self‑serve checkout and entitlement flows that need to be reliable at Rippling's full customer volume, and owning experiences that have to work coherently across a complex multi‑product environment. If you like building foundational systems that multiply the output of teams around you and care deeply about the quality of what users actually experience, this is the work.

What you will do:

• Design and build backend systems that power Core Experience's highest‑leverage surfaces: onboarding flows, self‑serve purchasing, and the shared platform primitives other product teams rely on
• Take technical ownership end‑to‑end, from schema design and API contracts to performance, reliability, and observability in production
• Work directly with product and design to shape how features get built, not just implement what's handed to you
• Build for scale and reuse: the systems you design will be consumed by other engineering teams across Rippling, so correctness, documentation, and thoughtful abstraction matter

About you:

• 8+ years of professional software engineering, with a strong track record in backend systems
• Systems thinking: You design for scale, fault tolerance, and correctness from the start. You understand the trade‑offs between consistency and availability, and you know when simple is the right answer and when it isn't
• Full‑stack range: You're backend‑leaning but comfortable owning a feature end‑to‑end
• High agency: You identify the problem before you're asked, scope a solution, and execute. You don't need a well‑defined ticket to make progress
• Platform instinct: You think about your work as infrastructure others will build on, and you write code and design APIs accordingly
• Tech stack: Deep proficiency in a modern backend language (Python, Go, Java, etc.) and strong data modeling skills across SQL and NoSQL

Additional Information

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected characteristics. Rippling is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need assistance during the hiring process. To request a reasonable accommodation, please email [e-mail]

Rippling highly values having employees working in‑office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. For office‑based employees (employees who live within a defined radius of a Rippling office), Rippling considers working in the office, at least three days a week under current policy, to be an essential function of the employee's role.