About RipplingRippling 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 rolePayroll is the core engine of Rippling, and we are currently undertaking the most strategic engineering initiative in the company's history: converging our legacy US Payroll system into our modern, country-agnostic Global Payroll architecture. This is not a standard maintenance role; it is a high-stakes architectural transformation that is currently the top priority for our Engineering leadership.
As a Staff Engineer on the Enterprise Customer Experience team, you will report directly to the VP of Engineering to lead this critical transition. You will architect the migration pipeline required to move our largest, most complex enterprise customers to the new Global Payroll platform, while ensuring the legacy system remains rock-solid during the shift. Your work will remove the biggest bottleneck to Rippling's growth and lay the foundation for the next generation of "intelligent payroll"-ensuring millions of employees get paid on time and accurately no matter where they are and how they work.
What you will do- Architect Complex Migrations: Design and build the high-scale migration tooling and strategies required to move massive enterprise datasets from our legacy US system to the Global Payroll platform with zero data loss or downtime.
- Drive Performance Engineering: Solve critical database performance challenges. You will optimize query patterns, design application-level sharding strategies, and architect the Global Payroll system to handle the scale of our largest enterprise clients.
- Ensure System Stability: Own the reliability and performance of the legacy US Payroll system for our top-tier customers, ensuring they receive a seamless experience even as we transition the underlying architecture.
- Lead Technical Vision: Collaborate with Principal Engineers and the SVP of Engineering to define the technical roadmap for the convergence of our payroll stacks, turning ambiguous "special project" requirements into concrete engineering execution.
- Hands-on Execution: Operate as a prolific individual contributor. You will be hands-on with the code, debugging complex production issues, building observability dashboards, and shipping critical features.
- Mentorship: Raise the technical bar for the team by leading design reviews, advocating for best practices in distributed systems, and mentoring senior engineers.
What you will need- 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer, with a proven track record of technical leadership in high-growth environments.
- Deep Distributed Systems Expertise: Experience architecting and maintaining large-scale distributed computing systems. You understand the nuances of application-level partitioning, sharding, and data consistency.
- Migration Experience: A strong track record of executing large-scale system migrations. You have experience moving complex production systems without disrupting the customer experience.
- Database Optimization Skills: You are comfortable debugging critical database performance issues, optimizing complex queries, and designing schemas for scale.
- Backend Proficiency: Strong proficiency in Python and Django (or similar frameworks) is highly preferred, along with experience using MongoDB or similar NoSQL databases.
- Bias for Action: You thrive in ambiguous environments and can take a high-level business goal (e.g., "Migrate all Enterprise customers") and break it down into a technical execution plan.
Additional InformationRippling 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
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.
The pay range for this role is:
180,000 - 315,000 USD per year (US San Francisco Bay Area)
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