Staff Software Engineer - Cloud Infrastructure

Infrastructure Overview

Ripping gives businesses one place to manage HR, IT, and Finance, bringing together scattered systems into a single platform. Key examples include:

• Taking onboarding to 90 seconds by setting up payroll, corporate cards, computers, benefits, and third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365.
• Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from top investors and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement the next generation of cloud infrastructure to support a 4x increase in system load, ensuring resilience and performance at scale.
• Own the evolution of the K8s ecosystem, maintaining both the core monolith and growing microservices environment.
• Build infrastructure primitives that enable product teams to ship complex features seamlessly.
• Tackle high-order problems such as global consistency, database contention, and high-throughput background processing.
• Work deeply with infrastructure to manage complex distributed systems powering every Rippling product.
• Drive technical consensus on complex, cross-functional initiatives, bridging infrastructure and product engineering.
• Engineer high-efficiency resource strategies, optimizing Kubernetes utilization and AWS spend to ensure sustainable infrastructure growth.
• Set the standard for code quality and architectural patterns, shaping Rippling's future.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record of architecting and scaling infrastructure.
• Background in product development with a focus on empowering developers and serving the end-user.
• Deep experience with distributed systems and a strong grasp of handling extreme loads.
• Exceptional communication skills to influence technical strategy across multiple engineering teams.
• Hands-on expertise with Kubernetes orchestration, including custom controllers, networking, and sophisticated scaling strategies.
• Able to approach large, complex codebases as engineering puzzles requiring world-class architectural thinking.
• High proficiency in modern backend languages (Python, Go, or Java), with a desire to master Python and the ability to dive deep into any stack to solve bottlenecks.

Qualifications

• Experience with AWS and a strong understanding of its services.
• Knowledge of distributed systems and a history of solving complex technical problems.
• Ability to communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a passion for building scalable solutions.

Skills

• Proficiency in Kubernetes orchestration and management.
• Experience with distributed systems and high-performance computing.
• Understanding of cloud-native architectures and practices.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools.

Benefits

• Equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion.
• Reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities.
• Flexible work arrangements, including the option to work in-office at least three days a week.

Pay

• Competitive salary + benefits + equity.
• The pay range for this role is 189,000 - 330,750 USD per year (US Tier 1).

Schedule

• Office-based employees must work at least three days a week in a Rippling office.