Staff Software Engineer - Payroll Processing

Rippling; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 315,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity

Office-based work policy

Job summary

Rippling is seeking a Staff Engineer to shape the Payroll Processing core platform in San Francisco and drive architecture, scalability, and long-term technical vision for services handling billions of dollars monthly.

You will lead end-to-end feature delivery, mentor engineers, and improve performance, reliability, and observability to support global growth. A strong Python/Django background is highly valued.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience with leadership
• Strong Python and Django proficiency preferred
• Experience building large-scale distributed backend systems
• Deep expertise in architecture, data modeling, and core services
• Customer-focused mindset with impact on business-critical flows
• Strong written and oral communication across diverse teams
• Experience with NoSQL databases is a plus

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture for the next generation of the payroll processing engine for multiple countries.
• Own end-to-end delivery of high-impact features from design to production and monitoring.
• Drive roadmap for payroll processing, addressing performance, reliability, and refactors.
• Tackle ambiguous technical challenges and translate into actionable plans.
• Build scalable, maintainable systems with data integrity across services.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, lead design reviews, promote best practices in code quality and observability.
• Collaborate with Product, Payments, Risk, Accounting and other engineering leaders to deliver cohesive platform-wide solutions.

Skills

Python

Django

Technical leadership

Distributed backend

System architecture

Data modeling

NoSQL (MongoDB)

Communication

Tools

MongoDB

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

Payroll is the most critical financial transaction between a company and its people. The Rippling Payroll Processing is a core platform team responsible for all payments, banking, accounting and reporting functions in Payroll. This includes making sure the right amount is paid to each employee at the right time. 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 also ensure payroll & payments data is readily available to employees and admins via pay stubs, accounting integration, payroll journals, debit summaries, etc. We provide an unique opportunity for highly motivated individuals to work and ship impactful, user-facing, and challenging projects end-to-end.

As a Staff Engineer on this team, you will be a key technical leader shaping the future of this core platform which processes billions of dollars every month. You will be responsible for the architecture, scalability, and long-term technical vision of these services. Your work will directly impact our ability to scale globally.

What You Will Do

• Lead technical architecture for the next generation of our global payroll processing 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.
• Collaborate across functions with Product Management, Payments, Risk, Accounting and other engineering leaders to deliver cohesive, platform-wide solutions.

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.

• Commission is not guaranteed
• This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity.

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.

The pay range for this role is:

180,000 - 315,000 USD per year(US)