# Senior Staff Software Engineer

**Company:** [Rippling](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/rippling)
**Location:** Bengaluru, India
**Role:** Fullstack Engineering
**Experience:** 15+ years
**Skills:** Python, Java, Go, C++, Scala, Kotlin, C#, Distributed Systems, APIs, Databases, Data Modeling, Cloud Infrastructure, Observability, Ai/Ml Infrastructure, Llm Systems
**Posted:** 2026-07-10

> Leads architecture and hands-on development of large-scale, mission-critical distributed systems across multiple teams. The role requires 15+ years of software engineering experience, deep system design expertise, and the ability to influence technical direction while mentoring engineers.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Own broad, ambiguous, and high-impact technical charters across multiple teams or systems.
- Design and build scalable, reliable, and maintainable distributed systems.
- Lead architecture and technical strategy for critical platform, backend, infrastructure, or product engineering initiatives.
- Break down complex technical problems into clear execution plans.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, Data, and business stakeholders.
- Make technical decisions concerning scale, reliability, performance, latency, availability, observability, and maintainability.
- Stay hands-on through design reviews, code reviews, debugging, prototyping, and implementation decisions.
- Identify technical risks and drive alignment on durable solutions.
- Mentor Staff, Senior, and mid-level engineers.
- Establish engineering best practices and standards for design, coding, testing, and operations.
- Influence technical direction without formal authority.
- Improve system quality through architecture, operational maturity, incident learnings, and platform-level thinking.

## Requirements
- 15+ years of software engineering experience, preferably in backend, platform, infrastructure, distributed systems, product engineering, or systems engineering.
- Experience operating at Senior Staff, Principal, or Staff+ technical scope.
- Strong coding, debugging, design, and system-building experience.
- Strong programming ability in one or more backend or general-purpose languages.
- Experience building and operating large-scale production systems.
- Strong architecture and system design knowledge across distributed systems, APIs, databases, data modeling, concurrency, reliability, observability, and performance.
- Ability to own ambiguous, cross-functional, multi-team technical initiatives end to end.
- Strong technical judgment and ability to balance speed, quality, scale, reliability, cost, and maintainability.
- Ability to influence senior engineers, product leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders without formal authority.
- Mentorship experience and a track record of raising the technical bar.
- Comfort operating in fast-paced, high-ambiguity environments.
- Strong communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences.

## Nice to Have
- Experience in high-growth or product-led technology companies.
- Experience building platforms or systems used by multiple internal teams or external customers.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, workflow engines, data platforms, or internal tooling.
- Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure, LLM systems, automation platforms, evaluation frameworks, or data-intensive systems.
- Experience with reliability engineering, incident management, observability, performance tuning, and operational excellence.
- Experience with security, compliance, permissions, auditability, or enterprise-grade systems.
- Experience in SaaS, fintech, HR tech, payroll, benefits, compliance, IT, data platforms, or workflow-heavy domains.
- Ability to operate as a builder-leader who defines direction, aligns stakeholders, and remains close to execution.

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