Staff Software Engineer - Payroll AI

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Competitive benefits package

Collaborative work environment

Job summary

Rippling in San Francisco is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead the transformation of global payroll infrastructures. This role focuses on building automated onboarding systems that leverage AI technologies, ensuring seamless user experiences and regulatory compliance.

The ideal candidate will have extensive software engineering experience to architect scalable and efficient systems while contributing to Rippling's fast-paced growth across international markets.

Competitive salary and equity included, estimated at $189,000 to $315,000 per year based on location.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on scalable systems.
• Experience with AI integrations and LLM technologies.
• Proven track record of designing and deploying complex architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design and build platform infrastructure for global payroll expansion.
• Create AI-driven workflows that enhance user experience.
• Translate regulatory frameworks into robust backend systems.
• Optimize data integrity and platform scalability.

Skills

AI technologies

Platform architecture

Data integrity

Regulatory framework knowledge

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Staff Software Engineer - Payroll Onboarding

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

Rippling processes over $40 Billion in payroll annually across 83 countries and the Payroll Onboarding team sits at the absolute centre of this global engine. Every time a new business joins Rippling, our systems are what get them up, running, and compliant.

We are hiring Staff Engineers to redefine how global payroll infrastructure scales. Our mission is to move away from heavy, manual implementation and build a radically automated, self‑serve onboarding engine. Right now, that means we are building AI‑native onboarding experiences leveraging LLMs to conversationally guide users through dense, regional tax and payroll configurations, while pairing them with deterministic backend systems to guarantee flawless data precision.

Crucially, we aren’t just building for today's footprint. We are building the architectural blueprint that accelerates Rippling’s expansion into new countries. You will design systems that allow our country expansion teams to spin up payroll in a new market in a fraction of the time, abstracting away local compliance complexities into clean, reusable platform workflows.

What you will do

• Architect for Global Expansion: Design and build platform infrastructure that empowers country expansion teams to deploy Rippling Payroll into new international markets with minimal friction.
• AI‑Driven Workflows: Merge LLMs with rigid, deterministic code. You will build conversational setup experiences that feel human but execute with 100% mathematical and compliance accuracy.
• Deconstruct Complexity: Translate massive, messy regulatory frameworks and payroll setup flows across dozens of jurisdictions into clean, elegant backend systems and seamless product UX.
• Scale the Platform: Own core pieces of a massive transactional system, optimizing for scale, high availability, and bulletproof data integrity.

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.

Pay range for this role: 189,000 – 315,000 USD per year (US San Francisco Bay Area)