Rippling
Principal Software Engineer – Global Payroll
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Principal Software Engineer – Global Payroll
role at
Rippling .
About Rippling
is a single platform that brings together HR, IT, and Finance, allowing businesses to manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle. Rippling’s cohesive system includes payroll, benefits, expenses, and computer provisioning among others.
About Rippling Payroll
redefines how companies pay their people worldwide. Built on Rippling Unity, the Payroll platform connects HR, IT, and Finance so every policy, approval, and pay calculation stays in sync across systems and countries.
The Opportunity
– We are looking for a Principal Engineer to architect and scale Rippling’s next-generation Global Payroll Platform, a system that powers payments, compliance, and computation for millions of employees in over 50 countries.
What You’ll Own
Architect Rippling’s next-gen Payroll computation engine – modular, extensible, and capable of encoding multi-jurisdictional compliance logic declaratively.
Design data models and pipelines that handle versioned pay runs, audit trails, retroactive corrections, and time-based computations at global scale.
Build scalable rules engines to automate ever-changing tax, benefits, and labor laws across jurisdictions, ensuring compliance through dynamic, AI-generated logic.
Modernize global payment infrastructure for real-time or near-instant disbursements while balancing reconciliation, fraud detection, and regulatory constraints.
Evolve reporting and permissions systems to deliver real-time insights and granular access controls for complex, multi-entity organizations.
Partner with Product, Compliance, and Finance teams to convert ambiguous regulatory specs into clear, deterministic system behavior.
Lead high-impact initiatives like sandboxed “simulation” payrolls, AI-powered paystub explainability, and what-if analysis for enterprises.
Shape the long-term platform vision, influencing 150+ engineers across Finance and HR Infrastructure as a multiplier, mentor, and architectural authority.
What Success Looks Like
System Reliability: Sub-second computation accuracy for global pay runs, with zero critical compliance defects.
Extensibility: New countries, pay types, and tax rules added with minimal engineering overhead.
Performance: Orders of magnitude improvement in latency and cost efficiency across distributed computation.
Developer Velocity: Simplified APIs, testing frameworks, and onboarding for internal and partner developers.
Business Impact: Reduction in country onboarding time, payroll failure rates, and manual compliance interventions.
What We’re Looking For
18+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems in high-compliance or high-integrity domains (Finance, Payroll, Tax, Insurance, etc.).
Deep expertise in data architecture, domain-driven design, and rule-based / event-driven systems.
Experience scaling compliance-heavy, multi-country systems – ideally payroll, tax, or financial computation platforms.
Proficiency in designing modular service boundaries, ensuring backward compatibility and auditability.
Strong understanding of computation correctness, versioned state, precision handling, and retroactive adjustments.
Proven ability to partner across functions – translating legal/compliance constraints into elegant, maintainable systems.
A strong architectural voice who can both design systems and mentor teams to scale them sustainably.
Bonus Points
Experience with AI-driven system automation or compliance-as-code frameworks.
Hands-on work with global payroll systems, real-time payments, or statutory tax logic.
Familiarity with event sourcing, CQRS, streaming pipelines, and immutable data stores.
Contributions to open-source distributed computation frameworks or rule engines.
Why Rippling
Backed by world-class investors (Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Bedrock, GIC, Elad Gil, Goldman Sachs)
Valued among the fastest-growing SaaS companies in history
Build at the heart of Rippling’s Finance platform, where Payroll, Spend, Bill Pay, and Banking converge into a unified ecosystem.
Join a team that pushes the limits of possible, builds winning systems, and moves fast with conviction.
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 accomodations@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.
Salary range:
216,000 - 378,000 USD per year (US)
Seniority Level
Director
Employment Type
Full-time
Job Function
Engineering, Information Technology, and Project Management
Industries
Software Development
#J-18808-Ljbffr
Principal Software Engineer – Global Payroll
role at
Rippling .
About Rippling
is a single platform that brings together HR, IT, and Finance, allowing businesses to manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle. Rippling’s cohesive system includes payroll, benefits, expenses, and computer provisioning among others.
About Rippling Payroll
redefines how companies pay their people worldwide. Built on Rippling Unity, the Payroll platform connects HR, IT, and Finance so every policy, approval, and pay calculation stays in sync across systems and countries.
The Opportunity
– We are looking for a Principal Engineer to architect and scale Rippling’s next-generation Global Payroll Platform, a system that powers payments, compliance, and computation for millions of employees in over 50 countries.
What You’ll Own
Architect Rippling’s next-gen Payroll computation engine – modular, extensible, and capable of encoding multi-jurisdictional compliance logic declaratively.
Design data models and pipelines that handle versioned pay runs, audit trails, retroactive corrections, and time-based computations at global scale.
Build scalable rules engines to automate ever-changing tax, benefits, and labor laws across jurisdictions, ensuring compliance through dynamic, AI-generated logic.
Modernize global payment infrastructure for real-time or near-instant disbursements while balancing reconciliation, fraud detection, and regulatory constraints.
Evolve reporting and permissions systems to deliver real-time insights and granular access controls for complex, multi-entity organizations.
Partner with Product, Compliance, and Finance teams to convert ambiguous regulatory specs into clear, deterministic system behavior.
Lead high-impact initiatives like sandboxed “simulation” payrolls, AI-powered paystub explainability, and what-if analysis for enterprises.
Shape the long-term platform vision, influencing 150+ engineers across Finance and HR Infrastructure as a multiplier, mentor, and architectural authority.
What Success Looks Like
System Reliability: Sub-second computation accuracy for global pay runs, with zero critical compliance defects.
Extensibility: New countries, pay types, and tax rules added with minimal engineering overhead.
Performance: Orders of magnitude improvement in latency and cost efficiency across distributed computation.
Developer Velocity: Simplified APIs, testing frameworks, and onboarding for internal and partner developers.
Business Impact: Reduction in country onboarding time, payroll failure rates, and manual compliance interventions.
What We’re Looking For
18+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems in high-compliance or high-integrity domains (Finance, Payroll, Tax, Insurance, etc.).
Deep expertise in data architecture, domain-driven design, and rule-based / event-driven systems.
Experience scaling compliance-heavy, multi-country systems – ideally payroll, tax, or financial computation platforms.
Proficiency in designing modular service boundaries, ensuring backward compatibility and auditability.
Strong understanding of computation correctness, versioned state, precision handling, and retroactive adjustments.
Proven ability to partner across functions – translating legal/compliance constraints into elegant, maintainable systems.
A strong architectural voice who can both design systems and mentor teams to scale them sustainably.
Bonus Points
Experience with AI-driven system automation or compliance-as-code frameworks.
Hands-on work with global payroll systems, real-time payments, or statutory tax logic.
Familiarity with event sourcing, CQRS, streaming pipelines, and immutable data stores.
Contributions to open-source distributed computation frameworks or rule engines.
Why Rippling
Backed by world-class investors (Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Bedrock, GIC, Elad Gil, Goldman Sachs)
Valued among the fastest-growing SaaS companies in history
Build at the heart of Rippling’s Finance platform, where Payroll, Spend, Bill Pay, and Banking converge into a unified ecosystem.
Join a team that pushes the limits of possible, builds winning systems, and moves fast with conviction.
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 accomodations@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.
Salary range:
216,000 - 378,000 USD per year (US)
Seniority Level
Director
Employment Type
Full-time
Job Function
Engineering, Information Technology, and Project Management
Industries
Software Development
#J-18808-Ljbffr