Senior Engineering Manager - Platform

About Rippling

Rippling is a comprehensive platform that consolidates HR, IT, and Finance operations into a single system, replacing traditional fragmented workforce tools such as payroll, expenses, benefits, and device management. It enables businesses to automate the entire employee lifecycle efficiently—for example, hiring a new employee globally and setting up payroll, corporate cards, computers, benefits, and third-party applications like Slack or Microsoft 365 within 90 seconds. Rippling is headquartered in San Francisco and has raised over $1.85 billion from leading investors including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock. It has been recognized by Forbes as one of America’s best startup employers.

Role Overview

This Senior Engineering Manager role leads a vital platform engineering team responsible for core infrastructure and foundational products used across Rippling. The position covers several important horizontal domains such as Data Deletion, Webscripts, Internationalisation, and the Rippling Config Service. These systems address platform scalability, developer productivity, compliance, configuration management, and customer-facing product quality. The ideal candidate is a strong technical leader able to navigate ambiguous challenges, work closely with product and infrastructure partners, and build resilient scalable systems that grow with Rippling’s diverse product suite.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and expand a team focused on critical platform projects.
• Drive the technical strategy and execution across Data Deletion, Webscripts, Internationalisation, and Config Service.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners in product, design, compliance, security, and infrastructure to map out roadmaps and delivery plans.
• Conduct architecture reviews to ensure systems are reliable, scalable, maintainable, and secure.
• Define ownership standards, operational excellence, and engineering quality across multiple platform domains.
• Balance immediate product requirements with strategic platform development.
• Coach senior engineers and leads to enhance technical skill and leadership.
• Enhance execution rigor with effective planning, prioritization, metrics tracking, incident reviews, and continuous improvement.
• Participate in cross-functional forums representing the team and clearly communicate tradeoffs to senior stakeholders.

Candidate Profile

• Minimum 12 years in software engineering with at least 3 years leading engineering teams.
• Experience managing platform, infrastructure, developer productivity, or shared core product teams.
• Strong technical insight into distributed systems, data architecture, APIs, reliability, and system scaling.
• Skilled in managing complex, cross-functional initiatives involving multiple stakeholders.
• Adept at leading senior engineers and fostering alignment across teams.
• Disciplined execution skills including roadmap development, project management, operational metrics, and incident response.
• Ability to juggle product velocity and long-term platform stability.
• Excellent verbal and written communication focused on technical strategy and tradeoff discussions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with data privacy, compliance, lifecycle, and deletion systems such as GDPR and CCPA.
• Experience building internal shared platforms or frameworks used company-wide.
• Knowledge of internationalisation and localisation engineering.
• Background in configuration management, feature rollout, or policy management systems.
• Exposure to low-code, scripting, workflow, or extensibility platform development.

Why This Role Is Important

This team develops the foundational systems that numerous Rippling products rely on. The position demands a platform-thinking leader who can create leverage across teams, minimize duplication, improve system reliability, and ensure scalability as Rippling’s reach expands across products, geographies, and client types.

About You

You are a proactive engineering leader who thrives working at both technical and organizational levels. While capable of engaging in architectural design, your main impact lies in providing clarity, building capable teams, and enabling engineers to deliver robust systems within complex settings.

Additional Information

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion, prohibiting discrimination on numerous legally protected grounds. It provides reasonable accommodations during hiring for candidates with disabilities. Requests for accommodations can be made via email.

Rippling highly values in-office collaboration. Employees residing near a Rippling office are expected to work on-site at least three days per week as part of current policies to foster workplace collaboration and company culture.