Staff Software Engineer - Tax Platform

About Rippling

Rippling offers an integrated workforce platform that unifies all HR and IT management functions—including payroll, benefits, computer provisioning, and app access—streamlining employee data in one central system. This allows businesses to automate and simplify tasks like onboarding, enabling setup of payroll, insurance, devices, and third-party applications within minutes.

Headquartered in San Francisco and backed by $1.8 billion from leading investors, Rippling is recognized as a top startup employer nationwide.

Role Overview

The Tax Platform team is among a select few companies globally controlling full tax calculation and filing processes. Managing over $30 billion in payroll annually for 1 million+ employees, they operate scale-critical systems processing numerous payroll transactions internationally, covering more than 4,000 tax jurisdictions while adapting to evolving regulations.

This position is for a Staff Software Engineer responsible for guiding technical direction, leading architectural decisions, and shaping the tax platform’s future infrastructure. This role has broad influence across the function and sets engineering standards organizationally.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead design of critical systems processing billions in tax calculations and ensuring scaling to sustain 50% annual growth.
• Take ownership of initiatives visible across the function, influencing roadmaps and company-wide strategies.
• Define and promote engineering best practices and scalable patterns across multiple teams.
• Build highly reliable systems designed for auditability, accuracy, and graceful failure under load.
• Address the architectural complexities of processing global payroll transactions with extensive jurisdictional coverage and dynamic tax rules.
• Act as the technical leader in cross-team collaborations, converting business goals into technical approaches.

Candidate Requirements

• At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience demonstrating leadership abilities.
• Experience architecting large-scale distributed systems with stringent reliability needs.
• Proficiency in an object-oriented programming language with a history of designing systems used by other engineers.
• Proven aptitude in influencing technical strategy and decisions across multiple teams.
• A strong sense of ownership, seeing issues through all lifecycle stages.
• Commitment to rigorous engineering standards focusing on correctness, testing, and operational excellence.
• Strong communication skills for effective representation of engineering concepts to leadership and stakeholders.