Senior Director of Engineering - Payroll Platform

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.

Engineering Leader, Payroll Platform

About The Role

Rippling is rapidly expanding its global footprint, and our Payroll Platform is the financial backbone that enables every dollar to move through the system—powering payroll, benefits, reimbursements, tax remittances, and more. It’s one of the most technically complex and business-critical domains at the company, touching every product line and customer interaction.

As the Engineering Leader for Payroll Platform, you will lead the teams responsible for the architecture, scalability, and reliability of Rippling’s global payments infrastructure. You’ll define the long-term strategy for how money moves through Rippling—across multiple geographies, currencies, and regulatory frameworks—while enabling new product innovation on top of that foundation. This role requires a rare blend of deep platform expertise, organizational leadership, and product intuition.

What You Will Do

• Set and drive the technical and organizational strategy for Rippling’s global Payroll Platform, defining the vision for scale, reliability, compliance, and developer experience across the company.
• Build and lead multiple engineering teams responsible for the systems that power payments, disbursements, reconciliation, and integrations with global payment rails.
• Partner cross-functionally with Finance, Risk, Legal, Product, and other engineering orgs (Payroll, HRIS, Benefits, Time) to deliver cohesive, compliant, and resilient payment solutions.
• Oversee the design and evolution of foundational components such as payment orchestration layers, ledgers, risk and fraud systems, and reconciliation services.
• Ensure platform performance and reliability, enabling both real-time and batch payments at massive scale.
• Drive large-scale cross-org initiatives, including international expansion, new currency support, and strategic vendor integrations.
• Elevate the engineering culture, mentoring senior leaders and fostering operational excellence, design rigor, and accountability across distributed systems.
• Influence at the executive level, working closely with the CTO, VP of Engineering, and Product leadership to align on multi-year architecture and organizational growth plans.
  
  

What You Will Need

• 12 years of professional software engineering experience, with 5 years leading high-performing teams or organizations.
• Proven success building and scaling financial or payments infrastructure at large scale (e.g., global payroll, money movement, or banking systems).
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, data integrity, and transactional consistency—especially within regulated or high-availability environments.
• Strong architectural judgment and ability to design for scale, reliability, and security while balancing product agility.
• Demonstrated ability to recruit, mentor, and develop senior engineers and managers, building teams that execute with excellence.
• Experience navigating financial compliance and risk management requirements across multiple markets.
• A collaborative, outcome-driven leadership style that thrives in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
  
  

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:

225,000 - 393,750 USD per year(US)