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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Distributed Systems Engineer - **Company:** Rippling People Center Inc. - **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Concurrency Controls, Distributed Systems, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Queueing Systems, Data Logging, System Availability, Snowflake, Apache Kafka, Vertica, Data Pipelines, Programming Languages - **Published:** September 4, 2026 - **Apply:** https://startup.jobs/staff-software-engineer-payroll-orchestration-current-16-8303082 ## About the Role * 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. ## Description We're looking for a talented Distributed Systems Engineer to join our core payroll team and play a key role in designing and implementing the distributed systems that drive our core payroll engine for several major countries. You'll be responsible for building and maintaining highly scalable platforms that leverage message queues, job flow systems, bitemporal data models, and efficient data pipelines to ensure accurate and timely payroll processing. 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. ## Related Videos - [Fault Tolerance and Consistency at Scale: Harnessing the Power of Distributed SQL Databases](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1146-fault-tolerance-and-consistency-at-scale-harnessing-the-power-of-distributed-sql-databases) - [40 Minutes to Build a Serverless COVID-19 REST and GraphQL APIs](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/208-40-minutes-to-build-a-serverless-covid-19-rest-and-graphql-apis) - [How Cisco embraced a DevOps culture within its network engineering team](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/99-how-cisco-embraced-a-devops-culture-within-its-network-engineering-team) - [What If We've Been Scaling Stream Processing Wrong All Along?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100139-what-if-we-ve-been-scaling-stream-processing-wrong-all-along) - [NoSQL Data Modeling for Front-end Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/297-nosql-data-modeling-for-front-end-developers) - [Hacking AI at the Edge of the Indian Ocean](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100177-hacking-ai-at-the-edge-of-the-indian-ocean) ## Related Articles - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again) - [Making Data Warehouses Fast: A Developer’s Story](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/107-making-data-warehouses-fast-a-developer-s-story) - [Highest Paying Tech Companies for Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/220-highest-paying-tech-companies-for-developers) - [Dev Digest 120 - Apple and peers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/455-dev-digest-120-apple-and-peers) - [The Best X (Twitter) Accounts for Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/294-the-best-x-twitter-accounts-for-developers) - [Résumé-Driven Development: How IT trends affect the job market for software developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/59-resume-driven-development-how-it-trends-affect-the-job-market-for-software-developers)