Senior Software Engineer

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 $1.8B+ 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.

The Variable Compensation (VC) team at Rippling is on a mission to revolutionize how organizations design, manage, and distribute performance-based pay. As an agile team we operate at the dynamic intersection of  Finance,HR and Artificial Intelligence. We are spearheading an AI-first product, navigating highly ambiguous, evolving requirements to build a seamless, intuitive, and highly scalable compensation platform from the ground up.

The team is structured into four key focus areas:

• Compensation Engine – Build the foundational system that powers dynamic pay rules and performance metrics, designed with the flexibility to support a wide range of custom compensation structures.
• Payment Orchestration – Design world class payment orchestrators and ledgers that support a wide range of use cases   .

• AI-First Design & Explainability – Leverage artificial intelligence to assist customers with plan design, setup, and administration, while building a robust "Explainability Layer" that gives employees a clear, 360-degree view of how their payouts are calculated.

• Scale: Build systems that can scale and process millions of payouts across thousands of unique and complex compensation plans.
• Infinite Flexibility: Build a rules engine capable of supporting the vast, complex, and highly customized ways different companies pay their people
• Resilience and Accuracy:  Build financial systems that are 100% correct.

Design systems that can adapt to increasing complexity without compromising performance or accuracy.

• Pioneering AI Integration: Design and build natively AI-driven architecture from scratch. We are translating highly ambiguous, unstructured compensation philosophies into deterministic, executable code using intelligent automation.

This role at Variable Compensation Team is a great opportunity to be a key technical leader at Rippling with high visibility and growth opportunities. The successful candidate will be responsible for leading the development and delivery of Rippling's finance platform. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to architect scalable systems, enhance existing features, and drive innovation in our product offerings, ensuring the successful delivery of high-quality, scalable, and reliable financial services to our customers. 

Your role will involve an outstanding blend of business and technical savviness, the ability to look into and build a big-picture vision, and make that vision a reality. This is a high ownership, impact, and visibility role building a product that will directly impact Rippling’s growth.

• →Engineer and maintain innovative, customer centric, high performance, secure and robust solutions.
• →Tackle complex engineering challenges, leveraging your expertise to devise ingenious solutions that push the boundaries of what is possible.
• →Work closely with product managers, engineers, and stakeholders to understand requirements, contribute to architectural decisions, and deliver high-quality solutions aligned with business objectives.
• →Review and share feedback on code, features, technology, architecture, and designs. Drive the standards around code quality and testing across your product.
• →Mentor and guide junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, best practices, and continuous learning within the team.
• →Develop and maintain technical documentation, including design documents, architecture diagrams, and test plans.
• →Stay up-to-date with emerging trends and technologies in FinTech industry.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field.
• 6+ years of professional software development experience, with a strong proficiency in Java, Python, or similar programming languages.
• Proven experience in designing and developing scalable, distributed systems or SaaS platforms.
• Ability to quickly understand and navigate large, complex codebases, and independently drive solutions for ambiguous or evolving requirements.
• Preferred experience in our technology stack- Python, Django, MongoDB, AWS.
• Excellent ability to communicate complex technical ideas with clarity and precision in written and verbal modes both within the team and with platform teams.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Preferred experience in high performance organization, preferably a tech startup.
• Experienced in integrating AI-assisted workflows (e.g., Claude, Cursor) into day-to-day development to improve velocity and engineering outcomes