About the role

Every company needs to decide where to invest in its workforce, find and hire the right people, help employees grow, and understand how the organization is performing. Headcount planning, recruiting, performance management, learning management, and employee surveys address these needs end to end. Together, they form a compelling product suite in their own right-one that helps companies build stronger teams and get more from their people.

These products are also essential to Rippling's enterprise and all-in-one promise. Large companies expect talent workflows to connect to the rest of their employee system, and a weak link creates a gap in the platform. A strong Talent suite is both a major business in its own right and a key reason customers can consolidate on Rippling.

This role's mandate is not to build a slightly better version of the standard Talent product suite-or to add a chat box to the workflows customers already know. It is to rethink the category around agents from the start. The product should detect when work needs to happen, complete as much of it as possible, and bring people in only for the decisions that require their judgment.

An agent can see that headcount has been approved, understand the organization and the profiles of employees who succeed in similar roles, identify candidates, launch an outreach campaign, triage replies, schedule next steps, and keep candidates and hiring teams moving. The same model applies after hiring: agents can detect skill or performance gaps, recommend or assign learning, help managers prepare for conversations, and turn survey feedback into follow-up work.

Rippling has a rare advantage in building this. Headcount plans, candidate data, employee records, performance, skills, compensation, reporting relationships, permissions, and workflows already live in one connected system. That context allows agents to do real work across the employee lifecycle-not just offer generic advice-while respecting the approvals and controls companies rely on.

We are looking for a Product Lead who will be the catalyst for this change-someone who can rebuild the suite around agents, challenge the standard product boundaries, and ship quickly. You will own the vision, strategy, and execution, lead a dedicated engineering and design team, and work directly with senior leaders across Rippling.

This is a rare opportunity to rethink an entire software category without starting from zero. The Talent business already has more than $100M of ARR and is growing roughly 100% year over year, with Rippling's large customer base and distribution behind it.

What you will do

• Rebuild the Talent suite around agents. Own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap across headcount planning, recruiting, performance management, learning management, and employee surveys-including how these products work together and where we invest first.
• Define agentic workflows from the earliest signal that work exists through completion. Build opinionated agents that can identify workforce needs, run recruiting campaigns, triage candidate communications, guide managers through performance decisions, close skill gaps through targeted learning, and turn survey feedback into action-not open-ended prompt boxes that leave the work to the user.
• Use Rippling's employee graph and cross-product context to build capabilities other talent products cannot. This includes using performance and employee data to improve candidate targeting while preserving permissions, approvals, and auditability.
• Ship quickly, learn from customers, and scale what works through Rippling's customer base and distribution. Set the quality bar, define success metrics, and build the reliability and controls required by complex customers.
• You will set direction, raise the quality of the team's thinking, and step into the product, data model, or customer conversation when that is what the work requires.
• Work closely with engineering (especially AI platform), design, data science, GTM, sales, implementation, and support to launch products that are easy to adopt, sell, service, and trust.
• Go and see the work firsthand. Build deep relationships with customers, understand where legacy talent products break down, and stay ahead of how AI is changing recruiting and talent management.

What you will need

• 8+ years of product management experience, or equivalent founder experience, with substantial ownership of a complex product area.
• A track record of building 0-to-1 products and scaling products after they find traction.
• AI-native product judgment. You use current AI tools, understand how agents and LLM-based products behave in practice, and have a strong point of view on where autonomy creates real customer value.
• Strong product and UX instincts. You can turn complex workflows, data, and organizational rules into experiences that feel simple and opinionated.
• Enough technical depth to work with engineering on data models, agent orchestration, integrations, permissions, and system design without needing translation.
• Comfort operating at multiple altitudes. You can set the strategy, make the hard prioritization calls, and get into the details of a workflow, edge case, or UI when needed.
• A self-starter with a bias toward action, high clock speed, and a deep sense of ownership. The buck stops with you.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to drive alignment across executives and highly cross-functional teams.
• Founder or hyper-growth startup experience is a strong plus. Talent software experience is helpful, but not required-we value first-principles product thinking over familiarity with legacy ATS patterns.
• Strong alignment with Rippling's leadership principles, especially Go and See, Push the Limits of Possible, and Are Right, a Lot.

If you don't meet every qualification listed, we still encourage you to apply. Skills and experiences can show up in many forms, and we value diverse perspectives and backgrounds.

Additional Information

This role will receive a competitive salary + benefits + equity. The salary for US-based employees will be aligned with one of the ranges below based on location; see which tier applies to your location here.

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone's compensation-including a candidate's professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed below.

The pay range for this role is:

174,000 - 290,000 USD per year (US Tier 1)