Senior staff software engineer

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

We’re looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to join our Time Products team. You’ll build innovative solutions that help businesses around the world manage their workforce. The products we create have a massive impact on how our customers operate at a global scale. Time Products surfaces have the highest QPS of any endpoints at Rippling, and we’re leading the company in terms of scaling our infrastructure and product experiences.

You’ll be a technical leader in the team, building and owning highly available, reliable, and scalable systems and responsible for the entire lifecycle of critical software. Your role encompasses architectural design, hands-on development, operational excellence, and technical mentorship for Sr and earlier career engineers on a fast-moving team with tremendous impact.

This is a chance to shape the future of a rapidly growing product suite, solve complex challenges, and help businesses manage their most valuable asset: their people.

What you will do

• Write Exceptional Code: Build scalable, maintainable, and high-performance backend systems that power critical workforce management products.
• Move Fast, But with Precision: Deliver high-quality features quickly by balancing speed and safety in your code.
• Drive Architecture & Design: Own architectural decisions and guide the full product lifecycle, from ideation to production. Utilize systems thinking to design and ship fault tolerant highly available, scalable and extendable systems.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work closely with product managers, designers, and other teams to gather customer feedback and refine the product roadmap.
• Mentor & Lead: Support the growth of senior and junior engineers by sharing your expertise and promoting engineering best practices across the team.
• Shape the Future: As an early member of this team, you’ll have a direct influence on team culture, structure, and processes.

What you will need

• Experience: 9+ years of experience in backend development with expertise in Python, Django, or similar technologies. Experience in building projects with clean abstractions and architecture
• Frontend Knowledge: Experience with React or JavaScript is a plus.
• Technical Expertise: Strong grasp of computer science fundamentals, algorithms, and system design. You’re comfortable developing scalable and extendable core services used in many products and can navigate complex technical challenges.
• Product Focused: You’re not just a coder—you care deeply about the end user, product design, and delivering an intuitive, polished experience.
• Entrepreneurial Spirit: You thrive in a fast-paced, unstructured environment. You don’t just solve problems—you identify them, own them, and create solutions that have a lasting impact.

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.