Product design lead

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 $1.85B+ 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

As the Product Design Lead focused on Foundations, you’ll shape the cross‑product surfaces and primitives that define Rippling’s core experience. From the Home surface to navigation, your work will set the standard for how customers move through and make sense of Rippling—and directly influence clarity, speed, and confidence across the suite.

You’ll work closely with design leadership to drive change through shared surfaces and rethink core experiences. You’ll deeply understand each of Rippling’s subsystems—HR, IT, Finance, and the platform beneath them—and lead cogent design updates that meaningfully steer Rippling’s experience strategy. From modern SaaS conventions to next‑generation automation- and AI‑powered (agentic) workflows, you’ll challenge the organization to move Rippling into the next era of enterprise software.

You’ll move quickly and think in systems, and you'll join a design org that values autonomy, depth, and impact. We treat foundations as a platform challenge, not just a set of screens. Success here is measured not just in pixels shipped, but in coherence, cross‑product adoption, and the quality of the foundation you lay for every product Rippling offers.

What You Will Do

• Design the end‑to‑end foundations of Rippling’s core experience—Home, navigation, and agentic workflows—crafting systems that are fast, scalable, and radically simple.
• Get close to customers, understand how they actually work across products, spot where cross‑product workflows break, and turn those insights into strategic design priorities that drive real business impact.
• Anticipate future needs and edge cases, designing solutions that scale as we expand into new markets and increasingly complex global scenarios.
• Develop and evolve a shared information architecture, aligning taxonomy, nomenclature, and navigation across subsystems.
• Deeply understand each of Rippling’s subsystems and connect the dots—leading cogent design updates that steer our experience strategy.
• Drive organizational alignment by communicating crisp narratives and frameworks; move challenging decisions through the organization to affect change.
• Introduce and normalize modern SaaS conventions and next‑gen, agentic workflows that elevate quality and accelerate the pace of innovation.
  
  

What You Will Need

• 8+ years of end‑to‑end product design experience, with a portfolio of complex, high‑impact products delivered from initial concept through iteration and delivery.
• Proven ability to think in systems and simplify complexity, with experience designing in challenging domains or compliance‑heavy environments.
• Exceptional visual and interaction craft with impeccable taste—the ability to produce clear, detailed specifications and contribute to the development of our design system.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills—an excellent communicator who is relentless in driving innovation and alignment across partners and levels.
• Relentless customer focus, backed by a habit of digging into real behavior, identifying pain points, and designing solutions that solve meaningful problems.
• A bias toward action, especially in ambiguous or fast‑moving environments—you have a track record of generating many ideas, iterating quickly, unblocking dependencies, and owning timelines without daily oversight.
• A portfolio where the execution quality speaks for itself—your shipped work sets the bar for craft, clarity, and impact.
• A proven track record of moving challenging decisions through an organization to affect change, influencing cross‑functionally and at multiple levels.
  
  

If you don't necessarily meet all of these requirements, we still encourage you to apply. Skills transfer in unexpected ways, and diverse perspectives often lead to the most innovative solutions.

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 [email protected]

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:

165,000 - 288,750 USD per year(US Tier 1)