Staff Software Engineer - Core Experience

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 189,000 - 315,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is hiring for a senior backend engineer to own the design and implementation of core backend systems that power onboarding, self-serve checkout, and platform primitives across Rippling's multi-product environment. You will shape schemas, contracts, and APIs, ensuring performance and reliability at scale.

The role requires deep backend expertise, data modeling across SQL and NoSQL, and proficiency in languages like Python, Go, or Java.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong design for scale, fault tolerance, and correctness.
• Backend-focused with ability to own a feature end-to-end.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend systems powering Core Experience surfaces.
• Own end-to-end schema design, APIs, performance, reliability, and observability.
• Collaborate with product and design to shape features beyond implementation.
• Build scalable, reusable systems that other teams rely on.

Skills

Backend systems

System design

APIs

Data modeling

SQL

NoSQL

Python

Go

Java

Full-stack mindset

Job description

About Rippling

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

About Rippling

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.
Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.
Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.
We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.

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.

The pay range for this role is

189,000 - 315,000 USD per year(US Tier 1)