# Staff Software Engineer - Payroll Orchestration

**Company:** [Rippling](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/rippling)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Go, Python, Temporal, Kafka, MongoDB, Postgres, Snowflake, ClickHouse, Distributed Systems, Message Queues
**Posted:** 2025-11-03

> Builds and maintains scalable distributed systems for payroll orchestration using message queues, job flows, and bitemporal data models. Requires 8+ years experience with Go/Python, concurrency control, and databases like PostgreSQL/MongoDB.

## Job Description

## What you will do
- Design, develop, and implement distributed systems with a strong platform mindset.
- Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code.
- Demonstrate expertise in concurrency control mechanisms and message ordering techniques to ensure data consistency in payroll processing.
- Utilize message queues and job flow systems (e.g. Temporal) to orchestrate complex workflows related to payroll engine and payments processing, guaranteeing message delivery and job execution.
- Develop efficient data pipelines utilizing different transactional and analytical query engines to deliver fast data aggregates that power the payroll engine.
- Leverage bitemporal data modeling techniques to effectively manage payroll data flows.
- **Collaboration**: Work closely with cross-functional engineering teams to align on strategic goals and ensure successful project delivery.
- **Observability**: Implement comprehensive observability practices, including monitoring, logging, and tracing, to ensure system health and performance.
- **Resiliency and SLAs**: Develop and maintain critical payroll platform systems with high availability and reliability, targeting four or five 9s uptime.

## What you will need
- 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer.
- Proficiency in a modern programming language (e.g. **Go**, **Python**). Comfortable at developing scalable and extendable core services and primitives with good abstractions that are used in many product flows. You have seen systems operating at a significant organizational scale.
- Solid understanding of message queues and job flow systems (e.g., **Temporal**, **Kafka**).
- In-depth knowledge of concurrency control mechanisms and message ordering techniques.
- Experience with DB transactional (e.g., **Mongo**, **PostgreSQL**) and analytical query engines (e.g, **Snowflake**, **Clickhouse**), and optimizing queries for performance.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
- Ability to work independently and take ownership of projects, while also thriving in a team environment.

## Additional Information
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.

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