Join Rippling as a Senior Staff Software Engineer, a pivotal individual contributor role focused on spearheading the design and development of expansive, critical systems. This position is for a seasoned engineer with over 15 years of experience, capable of operating with profound technical depth. You will influence cross-team initiatives and steer intricate engineering projects from their inception through architecture, execution, launch, and ongoing operational management.

We are seeking an architect with a hands-on approach, adept at understanding implementation trade-offs, mentoring fellow engineers, and elevating the overall engineering standards within the organization. This is an opportunity to shape the future of large-scale, mission-critical systems at Rippling.

Take ownership of broad, ambiguous, and high-impact technical projects spanning multiple teams or systems. Design and construct scalable, reliable, and maintainable distributed systems. Lead architecture and technical strategy for essential platform, backend, infrastructure, or product engineering endeavors. Deconstruct complex technical challenges into actionable execution plans.

Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, Data, and business stakeholders. Make strategic technical decisions regarding scale, reliability, performance, latency, availability, observability, and long-term maintainability. Remain actively involved through design and code reviews, debugging, prototyping, and crucial implementation decisions.

Proactively identify technical risks and drive consensus on robust solutions. Mentor Staff, Senior, and mid-level engineers, fostering technical leadership within the team. Establish engineering best practices, reusable patterns, and high standards for design, coding, testing, and operations. Influence technical direction organically, without formal authority. Enhance system quality through superior architecture, operational maturity, lessons learned from incidents, and platform-centric thinking.

A minimum of 15 years of dedicated software engineering experience, ideally within backend, platform, infrastructure, distributed systems, product engineering, or systems engineering. Demonstrated success operating at a Senior Staff, Principal, or Staff+ technical scope. Possess a deep, hands-on engineering foundation with extensive coding, debugging, design, and system-building expertise.

Proficiency in at least one backend or general-purpose programming language, such as Python, Java, Go, C++, Scala, Kotlin, or C#. Proven experience in building and managing large-scale production systems. Strong architectural and system design acumen, covering distributed systems, APIs, databases, data modeling, concurrency, reliability, observability, and performance.

Ability to lead ambiguous, cross-functional, and multi-team technical initiatives from start to finish. Exhibit strong technical judgment and adeptness at balancing speed, quality, scale, reliability, cost, and long-term maintainability. Influence senior engineers, product leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders effectively, even without direct authority.

Demonstrate a strong mentorship ethos, with a proven track record of improving the technical capabilities of other engineers. Thrive in fast-paced, high-ambiguity environments. Possess excellent communication skills, enabling clear articulation of complex technical decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences.