About Rippling

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.

We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.

About the role

Rippling is looking for a highly technical, hands-on Engineering Manager to lead a critical platform team powering the foundation of our payroll system. This team owns the ingestion, integration, and interface layers that bring together data from across Rippling—and external systems—into the payroll engine.

You will lead a small but high-impact team responsible for the “front door” of payroll: the systems that ingest, normalize, and distribute the data required to accurately and reliably pay employees. This includes internal platform interfaces, external APIs, and the pipelines that power payroll calculation, reporting, and downstream products.

This is a rebuild moment. As Rippling scales, the current systems—built incrementally—need to evolve into a more robust, scalable, and thoughtfully designed platform. You’ll play a key role in re-architecting this core infrastructure while partnering closely with teams across HRIS, Benefits, Time & Attendance, and beyond.

What you will do

• Own the platform layer for payroll data ingestion and integrations
  Lead the systems that ingest and unify data from across Rippling (HRIS, Benefits, Time, Spend, etc.) and external partners into the payroll engine.
• Drive a rebuild of core infrastructure
  Redesign and scale the integrations and data pipelines layer to support increasing data volume, complexity, and reliability requirements.
• Define and evolve APIs and system interfaces
  Own the internal and external interfaces for payroll, including APIs and integration points with third-party systems and partners.
• Lead a highly technical, hands-on team
  Manage and grow a small team (starting ~5 engineers), while staying close to the architecture, design, and execution details.
• Partner cross-functionally across the platform
  Work closely with teams across HRIS, Benefits, Time & Attendance, and other core systems to ensure clean, scalable data contracts and integrations.
• Enable downstream systems including payroll engine, reporting, and AI
  Ensure data pipelines reliably power payroll calculations, reporting layers, and emerging AI-driven products.
• Improve system reliability, scalability, and developer experience
  Address technical debt, standardize integration patterns, and build systems that are sustainable at scale.

What you will need

• Strong platform engineering background
  Experience building and scaling distributed systems, data pipelines, or platform infrastructure (payments experience not required).
• Hands-on technical leadership
  Ability to operate deeply in the code/design when needed—this role requires getting into the weeds, not just managing.
• Experience with large-scale, complex systems
  Proven track record designing systems that handle high data volume, reliability constraints, and cross-system dependencies.
• Systems thinking and architectural judgment
  Ability to identify long-term risks, design for scale, and avoid common pitfalls in evolving platform systems.
• Experience leading small, high-impact teams
  Comfortable building and scaling teams from an early stage, including hiring and shaping team structure.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills
  Ability to work across multiple product and platform teams to define contracts, integrations, and shared infrastructure.
• Builder mindset with a bias for action
  Comfortable stepping into imperfect systems, driving clarity, and executing on large, ambiguous problem spaces.

Additional Information

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected characteristics, Rippling is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need assistance during the hiring process. To request a reasonable accommodation, please email accommodations@rippling.com

Rippling highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. For office-based employees (employees who live within a defined radius of a Rippling office), Rippling considers working in the office, at least three days a week under current policy, to be an essential function of the employee's role.

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.