Demo

Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll Platform

Rippling
San Francisco, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 4/14/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 5/19/2026
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

As the Senior Engineering Manager for the Payroll Platform team, you’ll lead a high-impact engineering team for building the foundational platform within payroll organization that enable and support critical flows around payroll processing, approvals, corrections and many more.

In addition, this role will have a significant impact on Rippling’s growth and success, and make technical and business decisions which will shape the future of the product and company. We are looking for someone who takes immense pride in building excellent scalable products, building winning teams and being able to rally these towards a vision, and can attract and retain top talent.

What You Will Do

  • Architect for Scale: Lead the predominant backend strategy to evolve the Run Management engine, ensuring it can handle massive data throughput and complex orchestration logic.
  • Orchestrate Complexity: Manage the flow of raw HR inputs into the calculation engine, ensuring the "end-to-end tail engine" produces accurate, reliable outputs for high-stakes financial processes.
  • Drive Platform Excellence: Operate as a pure platform leader. You will focus on systems design, infrastructure reliability, and backend efficiency rather than traditional consumer-facing product features.
  • Collaborate Across Charters: Act as a strong communicator and bridge between the Onboarding and Payroll Processing pods, ensuring the Run Management layer serves as a seamless interface.

What You Will Need

  • 10 years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership capacity.
  • Scale Veteran: You understand the nuances of high-concurrency systems and distributed platform architecture.
  • Infrastructure Mindset: You have a background in building robust systems on top of cloud infrastructure and have ideally managed data platform or infrastructure-heavy teams.
  • Leader of Leaders: You have significant experience coaching and developing Engineering Managers, not just individual contributors.
  • Backend Specialist: You possess deep technical expertise in backend systems and orchestration patterns.
  • Strong Communicator: You can navigate a complex organizational structure, managing multiple charters and stakeholders with clarity and precision.

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.

The pay range for this role is:

207,000 - 362,250 USD per year(US Tier 1)

Salary.com Estimation for Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll Platform in San Francisco, CA
$192,230 to $242,557
If your compensation planning software is too rigid to deploy winning incentive strategies, it’s time to find an adaptable solution. Compensation Planning
Enhance your organization's compensation strategy with salary data sets that HR and team managers can use to pay your staff right. Surveys & Data Sets

What is the career path for a Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll Platform?

Sign up to receive alerts about other jobs on the Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll Platform career path by checking the boxes next to the positions that interest you.
Income Estimation: 
$172,572 - $208,062
Income Estimation: 
$213,144 - $271,444
Employees: Get a Salary Increase
View Core, Job Family, and Industry Job Skills and Competency Data for more than 15,000 Job Titles Skills Library

Job openings at Rippling

  • Rippling Seattle, WA
  • 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 ... more
  • 9 Days Ago

  • Rippling York, NY
  • 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 ... more
  • 9 Days Ago

  • Rippling Austin, TX
  • 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 ... more
  • 9 Days Ago

  • Rippling Austin, TX
  • 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 ... more
  • 9 Days Ago


Not the job you're looking for? Here are some other Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll Platform jobs in the San Francisco, CA area that may be a better fit.

  • Rippling San Francisco, CA
  • 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 ... more
  • 12 Days Ago

  • Crunchyroll San Francisco, CA
  • About Crunchyroll Founded by fans, Crunchyroll delivers the art and culture of anime to a passionate community. We super-serve over 100 million anime and m... more
  • 6 Days Ago

AI Assistant is available now!

Feel free to start your new journey!