Rippling is revolutionizing HR, IT, and Finance by unifying scattered workforce systems into a single platform. Imagine managing payroll, benefits, and IT infrastructure seamlessly from one place. This role is pivotal in scaling Rippling's complex SaaS platform, ensuring reliability, performance, and consistency across all user experiences.

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on the UI Platform team, you'll provide essential technical leadership. Your focus will be on the backend and full-stack foundations that empower hundreds of product engineers. You'll contribute to building and operating shared frameworks, platform services, and runtime infrastructure, setting the standard for UI development at Rippling.

This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of a rapidly growing, industry-leading company. You'll tackle some of the most critical technical challenges, driving innovation and ensuring the platform's long-term success. We are committed to candidate safety and ensure all official communications originate from @rippling.com email addresses.

Architect and champion core UI Platform services, including App Shell, performance frameworks, and configuration-driven systems like SuperGrid and Flows. Define and enforce architectural boundaries, establishing contracts that isolate critical product paths and minimize blast radius.

Develop robust performance budgets, tooling, and automated enforcement mechanisms to proactively identify and resolve performance and reliability issues before they impact production. Drive the evolution of configuration-driven platforms, replacing fragmented, bespoke solutions with scalable and reusable foundational elements.

Provide influential technical leadership and mentorship to a team of over 30 engineers within UI Platform, extending your impact across the broader Platform organization. Act as the primary architectural authority for UI Platform initiatives, guiding technical direction, conducting design reviews, and making critical high-impact technical decisions. Collaborate closely with Product, Design, Infrastructure, and Backend teams to translate complex requirements into enduring platform abstractions.

We seek a seasoned engineer with over 15 years of experience in building and operating large-scale backend, distributed, or platform systems. Proficiency in at least one backend language such as Golang, Java, or Python is essential, complemented by strong fundamentals in backend architecture.

Demonstrate a proven track record of developing internal platforms or foundational systems adopted by multiple engineering teams. Experience in designing effective guardrails, validation systems, and automated enforcement mechanisms is crucial. You should possess strong operational ownership skills, encompassing observability, debugging, incident response, capacity planning, and ensuring production reliability.

Capability to lead complex architectural initiatives and large-scale migrations across diverse teams is vital. You must excel at influencing engineering direction without direct reporting authority. This role demands a balance between hands-on coding and technical execution, alongside architecture, mentorship, and organizational leadership. Excellent written and verbal communication skills are necessary for design documents, RFCs, architecture reviews, and cross-team alignment.