Staff Software Engineer - Payroll Orchestration

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Rippling is seeking a distributed systems engineer to design and implement the core payroll engine across multiple countries. You will build scalable platforms using message queues, job flow systems, and bitemporal data models to ensure accurate payroll processing.

The role emphasizes concurrency control, observability, and high availability, with collaboration across cross-functional teams to align on strategic goals and deliver high-impact payroll solutions.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Proficient in a modern programming language (Go or Python).
• Experience with distributed systems, message queues, and data pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and implement distributed systems with a platform mindset.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code.
• Demonstrate expertise in concurrency control and message ordering for data consistency in payroll processing.
• Orchestrate complex workflows using message queues and job flow systems (e.g. Temporal).
• Develop efficient data pipelines and bidirectional data flows for payroll engines.

Skills

Go

Python

Distributed systems

Concurrency control

Communication

Tools

Temporal

Kafka

Job description

About the role

We’re looking for a talented Distributed Systems Engineer to join our core payroll team and play a key role in designing and implementing the distributed systems that drive our core payroll engine for several major countries. You’ll be responsible for building and maintaining highly scalable platforms that leverage message queues, job flow systems, bitemporal data models, and efficient data pipelines to ensure accurate and timely payroll processing.

What you will do

• Design, develop, and implement distributed systems with a strong platform mindset.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code.
• Demonstrate expertise in concurrency control mechanisms and message ordering techniques to ensure data consistency in payroll processing.
• Utilize message queues and job flow systems (e.g. Temporal) to orchestrate complex workflows related to payroll engine and payments processing, guaranteeing message delivery and job execution.
• Develop efficient data pipelines utilizing different transactional and analytical query engines to deliver fast data aggregates that power the payroll engine.
• Leverage bitemporal data modeling techniques to effectively manage payroll data flows.
• Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional engineering teams to align on strategic goals and ensure successful project delivery.
• Observability: Implement comprehensive observability practices, including monitoring, logging, and tracing, to ensure system health and performance.
• Resiliency and SLAs: Develop and maintain critical payroll platform systems with high availability and reliability, targeting four or five 9s uptime.

What you will need

• 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer
• Proficiency in a modern programming language (e.g. Go, Python)
• Comfortable at developing scalable and extendable core services and primitives with good abstractions that are used in many product flows
• You have seen systems operating at a significant organizational scale
• Solid understanding of message queues and job flow systems (e.g., Temporal, Kafka)
• In-depth knowledge of concurrency control mechanisms and message ordering techniques
• Experience with DB transactional (e.g., Mongo, PostgreSQL) and analytical query engines (e.g. Snowflake, ClickHouse), and optimizing queries for performance
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• 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.