← All roles

Staff Software Engineer - Payments

Rippling· Engineering
Apply on company site
San Francisco, CA$189k - $315kfull-timePosted 6mo ago

About the role

Staff Engineer on Payroll Payments leading the unified processing core for payroll money movement, shaping architecture, end-to-end delivery of high-impact features, and mentoring teams within Rippling’s Payments organization.

Responsibilities

  • Lead technical architecture for the next generation of our payroll payments 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.
  • Partner with Product, Risk, Accounting, Tax, Payroll, Ops, and Support to turn ambiguous payment-state problems into durable platform capabilities and intuitive user experiences.

Qualifications

  • 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.

Skills

Required:PythonDistributed backend systemsSystem architecture
Nice to have:DjangoNoSQL databases

Benefits

  • Competitive salary + benefits + equity
  • Office-based employees expected to work in-office at least three days a week (essential function per policy)
  • Salary ranges aligned to location; final offer based on location and experience
  • Equal opportunity employer; accommodations available upon request
Last updated Oct 7, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
Rippling logo

About Rippling

#1 Workforce Management System | HR, IT, Finance

Rippling eliminates the friction from running a business, combining HR, IT, and Finance apps on a unified data platform.

HRPayrollITFinanceGlobal
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at Rippling