Staff Software Engineer - Payments

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

Job summary

Rippling, based in San Francisco, is building Payroll Payments to convert payroll data into payment instructions and ensure accurate global payroll. As a Staff Engineer, you will shape the core payment processing architecture and own end-to-end delivery.

You will collaborate with Product, Risk, Accounting, Tax, Payroll, Ops, and Support to deliver scalable, reliable systems and mentor engineers across the org.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with technical leadership.
• Expertise in building large-scale distributed backend systems.
• Strong product sense and customer focus.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture for the payroll payments engine, designing scalable frameworks across countries.
• Own end-to-end delivery of high-impact features from design to production deployment and monitoring.
• Drive the technical roadmap for Payroll processing and improve performance and reliability.
• Tackle ambiguous technical challenges and turn them into concrete plans for the team.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, conduct design reviews and promote best practices.
• Partner with Product, Risk, Accounting, Tax, Payroll, Ops, and Support to deliver durable platform capabilities.

Skills

Python

Django

Distributed backend

Technical leadership

Mentoring

Communication

Tools

MongoDB

Job description

About this position

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

Payroll is the most critical financial transaction between a company and its people. Payroll Payments is the team within the Payments organization that owns converting payroll data into payment instructions - the what, who, and when of every debit and credit — and owning the admin, employee, contractor, Ops, and Support experience around those payments. To further enhance the integrity and efficiency of our operations, our team integrates robust risk management to prevent fraudulent activities. We manage core payment adjustment infrastructures and different funding/payment methods. We provide a unique opportunity for highly motivated individuals to work and ship impactful, user‑facing, and challenging projects end‑to‑end.

As a Staff Engineer on Payroll Payments, you will be a key technical leader shaping the unified processing core for payroll money movement. You will drive architecture for payment instruction generation, employer funding, payout initiation, observability, audits, and customer‑facing payment‑state experiences. Your work will directly determine whether Rippling can pay every person correctly and on time at global scale.

What you will do

• Lead technical architecture for the next generation of our payroll payments engine, designing scalable frameworks that support operations across multiple countries.
• Own the end‑to‑end delivery of high‑impact, complex features, from initial design and technical specifications through to production deployment and monitoring.
• Drive the technical roadmap for the Payroll processing team, identifying and tackling performance bottlenecks, reliability improvements, and architectural refactors.
• Take on ambiguous technical challenges and turn them into concrete, actionable plans for the team.
• Exercise expert technical judgment in building scalable, maintainable, and extensible systems, ensuring data integrity across complex and interdependent services.
• Raise the engineering bar for the entire organization by mentoring senior and junior engineers, leading in‑depth design reviews, and championing best practices for code quality, testing, and observability.
• Partner with Product, Risk, Accounting, Tax, Payroll, Ops, and Support to turn ambiguous payment‑state problems into durable platform capabilities and intuitive user experiences.

What you will need

• 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer, with a proven track record of technical leadership and driving org‑wide impact.
• Expertise in building large‑scale, distributed backend systems. Strong proficiency in Python and Django is highly preferred.
• Experience managing the complete project lifecycle, transforming intricate ideas and ambiguous requirements into successful launches independently.
• Deep expertise in system architecture, data modeling, and building core services with clean abstractions.
• A keen product sense and a passion for advocating for the customer, with experience building robust systems that directly impact business‑critical flows.
• Outstanding capacity to convey intricate technical concepts clearly and precisely, both in writing and verbally, to diverse functional teams.
• Experience with MongoDB or similar NoSQL databases is a strong plus.
• Ability to work independently and take ownership of projects, while also thriving in a team environment.

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.

This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. The salary for US-based employees will be aligned with one of the ranges below based on location; see which tier applies to your location here .

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone’s compensation–including a candidate’s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed below.

*Commission is not guaranteed

Salary Information

The pay range for this role is:

189,000 - 315,000 USD per year(US San Francisco Bay Area)