Senior Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Job Summary

Ripping 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. This role will help define the future of software development at Rippling.

About the Role

This is not a traditional Developer Experience role. You will own the architectural direction for how over 1,000 engineers—and increasingly thousands of AI agents—interact with one of the largest and fastest-growing codebases in the industry. You will shape the systems that determine how software gets built across the company, from local development environments and CI/CD pipelines to agent sandboxes, testing infrastructure, repository architecture, and AI-native development workflows.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the long-term technical vision for Rippling's Developer Experience platform
• Architect the next generation of AI-native engineering workflows across a 1,000+ engineer organization
• Own and evolve critical development infrastructure, including local and cloud environments, CI/CD systems, repository architecture, test infrastructure, build systems, and agent execution environments
• Design systems that allow both engineers and AI agents to safely, reliably, and efficiently develop software at scale
• Identify and eliminate systemic sources of friction that impact engineering productivity across the company
• Make high-leverage architectural decisions that influence hundreds of engineers and dozens of product organizations
• Lead large-scale technical transformations that span 100+ teams and millions of lines of code
• Establish technical standards and patterns that balance developer autonomy with platform consistency
• Partner closely with Infrastructure, Platform, AI, and Product Engineering leaders to solve company-wide challenges
• Dive deep into complex systems and codebases when necessary, driving clarity in ambiguous technical situations
• Mentor senior engineers and raise the technical bar across the organization

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience operating at the Staff or Senior Staff level
• Deep expertise building and scaling distributed systems in high-growth technology companies
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals and fluency in modern systems programming and application development
• Experience shaping architecture and technical strategy across large engineering organizations
• A track record of leading multi-year, cross-organizational technical initiatives from inception through execution
• Strong product intuition and a passion for understanding developer needs and building exceptional developer experiences
• Experience building platforms, infrastructure, developer tooling, CI/CD systems, or large-scale engineering productivity solutions
• Comfort operating in highly ambiguous environments where the right answer has not yet been defined
• Exceptional communication and influence skills, with the ability to align senior technical and executive stakeholders
• Curiosity and excitement about how AI will transform software development over the next decade

Qualifications

• Experience working with AI and machine learning technologies
• Experience with distributed systems, microservices, and containerization
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation
• Experience with large-scale codebases and repository management
• Experience with testing frameworks and infrastructure

Skills

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team
• Experience with version control systems (e.g., Git)
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure)
• Experience with DevOps practices and tools

Benefits

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 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.

Pay

The pay range for this role is: 201,000 - 335,000 CAD per year (CA) 207,000 - 345,000 USD per year (US)

Schedule

Not specified