About the role

Payroll is the most critical financial transaction between a company and its people. The Rippling Payroll Calculations team is the engine at the heart of this process, responsible for accurately calculating every component of a paycheck-from earnings and deductions to complex taxes and withholdings-for employees worldwide. This engine is mission-critical, processing billions of dollars and integrating deeply with HRIS, Benefits, and Time & Attendance.

We are building this calculation engine to be a scalable, global platform, enabling Rippling to launch new countries rapidly and reliably. As a Staff Engineer on this team, you will be a key technical leader shaping the future of this core platform. You will be responsible for the architecture, scalability, and long-term technical vision of the calculation services. Your work will directly impact our ability to scale globally, ensure 100% accuracy, and build the foundational framework that all other payroll product teams rely on.

What you will do

• Lead technical architecture for the next generation of our global payroll calculation engine, designing scalable frameworks that support operations across multiple countries.
• Own the end-to-end delivery of high-impact, complex features, from initial design and technical specifications through to production deployment and monitoring.
• Drive the technical roadmap for the Calculations team, identifying and tackling performance bottlenecks, reliability improvements, and architectural refactors.
• Take on ambiguous technical challenges (e.g., "design a system to support any country's tax model") and turn them into concrete, actionable plans for the team.
• Exercise expert technical judgment in building scalable, maintainable, and extensible systems, ensuring data integrity across complex and interdependent services.
• Raise the engineering bar for the entire organization by mentoring senior and junior engineers, leading in-depth design reviews, and championing best practices for code quality, testing, and observability.
• Collaborate across functions with Product Management, HRIS, and other engineering leaders to deliver cohesive, platform-wide solutions.

What you will need

• 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer, with a proven track record of technical leadership and driving org-wide impact.
• Expertise in building large-scale, distributed backend systems. Strong proficiency in Python and Django is highly preferred.
• Experience managing the complete project lifecycle, transforming intricate ideas and ambiguous requirements into successful launches independently.
• Deep expertise in system architecture, data modeling, and building core services with clean abstractions.
• A keen product sense and a passion for advocating for the customer, with experience building robust systems that directly impact business-critical flows.
• Outstanding capacity to convey intricate technical concepts clearly and precisely, both in writing and verbally, to diverse functional teams.
• Experience with MongoDB or similar NoSQL databases is a strong plus.

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:

189,000 - 330,750 USD per year (US San Francisco Bay Area)