Senior Staff Software Engineer

About the HRIS Product Team at Rippling: Rippling is rapidly expanding its customer base, supporting larger enterprise customers, and launc... expertise in both analytical and transactional systems, and a strong understanding of Scalability , Concurrency , SLAs, system resiliency, and observability. The candidate should be proficient in coding with languages such as Python, Golang, and Java, and experienced in handling systems with millions of users. Key Responsibilities Architect and Lead: Design, develop, and maintain internet-scale, highly distributed systems and scalable services for the Rippling HRIS team. Hands-On Coding: Actively participate in coding and code reviews, using languages such as Python, Golang, and Java. Technical Leadership: Provide visionary technical leadership, setting the direction for engineering best practices and the adoption of advanced technologies. Mentorship: Mentor and support engineers across the organization, fostering a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and technical excellence. System Design: Architect systems capable of handling millions of users simultaneously, ensuring high performance, reliability, and scalability. API Development: Design and implement clean, modularized abstraction APIs and programmatic APIs for both end users and engineers, including Backend for Frontend (BFF) systems. Storage Solutions: Design and implement Analytical systems that encompass both analytical (e.g., Presto, S3, Snowflake) and transactional (e.g., My SQL, Aurora, Mongo DB) systems. They should be able to handle petabyte scale Resiliency and SLAs: Develop and maintain systems with high availability and reliability, targeting four or five 9s (99.99% or 99.999%) uptime. Observability: Implement comprehensive observability practices, including monitoring, logging, and tracing, to ensure system health and performance. Streaming and Workflow Systems: Build and integrate streaming solutions (e.g., Spark Streaming, Apache Flink, Kafka Connect) and workflow systems for both transactional and analytical workflows. Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including product management, data science, and operations, to align on strategic goals and ensure successful project delivery. Innovation: Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies, driving innovation and continuous improvement within the Rippling HRIS team. Documentation and Standards: Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation and standards for system architecture, design, and operational processes. What success looks like Org-level leverage : Product teams ship faster without re-implementing common patterns or unintentionally breaking critical paths. Performance & reliability : App Shell consistently meets defined SLAs for performance and reliability, with regressions caught automatically. Consistency at scale : Core UI behaviors (grids, editor, navigation, flows) behave predictably across the product. Platform adoption : New and existing teams adopt UI Platform services as defaults rather than building bespoke solutions. Technical leadership : Engineers across the org look to you for architectural guidance and platform direction. What We’re Looking For 15+ years of experience building and operating large-scale backend, distributed, or platform systems. Deep programming experience in one or more backend languages such as Golang, Java, or Python . Strong fundamentals in backend architecture, including API design, data modelling, service boundaries, dependency management, concurrency, performance, reliability, and failure isolation. Proven experience building internal platforms or foundational systems used by multiple engineering teams. Experience designing guardrails, validation systems, and automated enforcement mechanisms—not just publishing guidelines. Strong operational ownership, including observability, debugging, incident response, capacity planning, and production reliability. Experience leading complex architectural initiatives and large-scale migrations across multiple teams. Ability to influence engineering direction without relying on direct reporting authority. Comfortable balancing hands-on coding and technical execution with architecture, mentorship, and organizational leadership. Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly through design documents, RFCs, architecture reviews, and cross-team alignment. Bonus Points Experience building configuration-driven platforms, workflow engines, orchestration systems, developer platforms, or low-code frameworks. Experience owning foundational platform systems adopted by hundreds of engineers or multiple product organizations. Background in safely migrating thousands of existing configurations, workflows, or application instances onto new platforms. Experience establishing performance budgets, reliability guardrails, platform governance, and automated architectural enforcement. Practical experience using AI-assisted developer tooling to accelerate migrations, automate refactoring, validate invariants, or review large-scale system changes. Familiarity with web or mobile application architecture and the backend infrastructure required to support complex user-facing platforms.