# Staff Software Engineer - Platform

**Company:** [Rippling](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/rippling)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** DevOps / SRE
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Distributed Systems, Python, Stream Processing, Micro-Batch Processing, AI Tools, Infrastructure, High Qps Systems, AWS Lambda, Dependency Tracking, Developer Tools
**Posted:** 2026-01-22

> Staff Software Engineer on the Platform team leads technical roadmap, scales distributed systems for high QPS and throughput, prototypes AI-powered primitives, and owns core infrastructure to enable Rippling's product ecosystem. Requires 8+ years experience with deep platform expertise.

## Job Description

## What You Will Do
- **Lead the Technical Roadmap:** Own the roadmap for one of our architectural areas, whether it’s moving our dependency tracking system to a micro-batch/stream processing powerhouse or redesigning our lambda interface for scale.
- **Think for the Future:** Prototype with the newest AI tools to think about primitives that will be used to democratize development with Rippling.
- **Solve for Scale:** Tackle our growing size and load and understand where we can be doing less work.
- **Own the Stack:** Work deeply with infrastructure to manage complex distributed systems that power every Rippling product.
- **Operate as a Tech Lead:** This is a "pure engineering" team. You will partner directly with other Platform Tech Leads and EMs (your primary customers) to define how Rippling’s core infrastructure evolves.

## Qualifications
- **8+ years** of software engineering experience, with significant time spent on core platform teams.
- **Deep Distributed Systems Expertise:** You have built and scaled systems that handle high QPS (10k+) and high data throughput.
- **Low-Level Enthusiast:** You can dive into the details when needed to diagnose issue and can handle the technical depth.
- **Developer First:** Everywhere you go, you create scripts, leave breadcrumbs, and think about how to make the developers around you succeed.
- **Language Agnostic:** Proficiency in Python (or a strong desire to master it).

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/69096ac7-a5b6-4244-99fa-d86d61c786af
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/69096ac7-a5b6-4244-99fa-d86d61c786af