Staff Software Engineer, Payroll Calculation

About Rippling

Rippling integrates human resources, IT, and finance management into a single platform, consolidating tools like payroll, benefits, expenses, and equipment management to automate and streamline the entire employee lifecycle. This unified approach enables hiring, payroll setup, equipment provisioning, benefits enrollment, and app integration —such as Slack and Microsoft 365—in under 90 seconds for global employees. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has secured over $1.4 billion in funding from prominent investors and was recognized by Forbes as one of America's top startup employers.

About The Payroll Calculation Team

The payroll system is a foundational element of any company’s operations, demanding accuracy, compliance, transparency, scalability, and trust from employees. At Rippling, this area represents a significant engineering and product challenge involving expansion to larger enterprises, scaling across global jurisdictions, and rebuilding essential payroll calculation infrastructure to foster more automation and clarity.

This team manages the core systems responsible for computing earnings, deductions, taxes, garnishments, pensions, and other country-specific payroll logics, operating at the intersection of distributed computing, compliance, data modeling, and user experience. They prioritize not only correct outputs but also enabling administrators to understand the calculation processes.

With growth in global payroll offerings and larger clients, the team is tasked with creating a robust technical foundation that supports configurable, version-controlled, auditable, and explainable payroll calculations at scale.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to spearhead this pivotal work, combining hands-on coding with leadership responsibilities. The role involves shaping architecture for payroll calculation systems, directing technical strategy, cultivating teams, and enhancing payroll accuracy and clarity globally.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and technical direction of payroll calculation frameworks.
• Develop critical production code and champion high-impact technical projects.
• Create configurable, versioned, testable, scalable, and debuggable payroll logic frameworks.
• Incorporate artificial intelligence to simplify payroll building, validation, explanation, and operations, while maintaining strict accuracy and audit standards.
• Develop systems that handle complex enterprise payrolls including multifaceted legal entities and approval workflows.
• Expand payroll coverage into additional countries and jurisdictions.
• Enhance distributed systems architecture, database performance, caching strategies, and reliability measures.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product teams, design, payroll operations, HRIS, and engineering to deliver seamless customer experiences.
• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers in payroll-related domains such as platform development, earnings, deductions, taxes, and jurisdiction-specific logic.

Required Qualifications

• Extensive experience at a staff engineer level building and scaling complex, production-grade systems where precision and auditability are paramount.
• Strong grasp of engineering principles including architecture design, data modeling, distributed systems, database optimization, caching, and system reliability.
• Proven ability to establish technical direction and guide multifaceted initiatives involving multiple teams.
• Sound product judgement aligned with customer-focused technical decisions.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to facilitate alignment among engineering, product, and diverse stakeholders.
• Adaptability to fast-paced environments with evolving priorities and requirements.
• While payroll industry experience is advantageous, expertise in other critical, integrity-sensitive domains focused on correctness and trust is also valued.

Additional Information

Rippling is dedicated to equal opportunity employment, actively promoting diversity and inclusion and prohibits discrimination based on legally protected characteristics. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request for candidates with disabilities during the hiring process.

This position offers a competitive salary, benefits package, and equity. For US employees, compensation ranges between $189,000 and $315,000 annually based on location and other factors such as background and expertise.