Staff Software Engineer - Tax Platform

About Rippling

Rippling is the first way for businesses to manage all of their HR & IT—payroll, benefits, computers, apps, and more—in one unified workforce platform.

By connecting every business system to one source of truth for employee data, businesses can automate all of the manual work they normally need to do to make employee changes. Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can just click a button and set up a new employees’ payroll, health insurance, work computer, and third-party apps—like Slack, Zoom, and Office 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, Bedrock, and Greenoaks—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes (#12 out of 500)

About Role

Rippling's Tax Platform is one of only ~5 companies globally that owns the full tax calculation and filing stack. We process over $30 billion in annual payroll for 1 million+ employees—growing 50% year-over-year. Our systems handle millions of payroll transactions across multiple countries, ensuring tax correctness across 4,000+ jurisdictions while staying compliant with constantly changing tax regulations.

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead technical strategy, drive architectural decisions, and shape the future of our tax infrastructure. You'll have function-wide impact and set the standard for engineering excellence across teams.
What You Will Do
System Design : Lead architecture for mission-critical systems handling billions in tax calculations; make decisions that define how the platform scales for 50% YoY growth
Ownership & Impact : Drive initiatives with function-wide visibility; your work shapes roadmaps and influences company strategy
Engineering Excellence : Define and champion engineering standards across teams; establish patterns that scale with the organization
Reliability & Correctness : Design systems where failure is not an option; build for auditability, correctness, and graceful degradation at scale
Global Scale : Tackle architectural challenges of processing millions of payroll transactions across multiple countries with 4,000+ jurisdictions and evolving regulations
Technical Leadership : Be the technical voice in cross-functional decisions; translate business needs into technical strategy
What You Will Have
8+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership
Proven ability to architect large-scale distributed systems with high reliability requirements
Deep expertise in any OOPs language and experience designing systems that other engineers build on
Track record of driving technical strategy and influencing decisions across multiple teams
Strong ownership mindset—you see problems through from identification to resolution
Rigorous engineering practices with a focus on correctness, testing, and operational excellence
Excellent communication skills; ability to represent engineering to leadership and stakeholders