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# Staff Software Engineer, Payroll Calculation

- **Company:** CO-RIPPLING LLC
- **Location:** United States
- **Salary:** $189,000.0 - $315,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Audit Trail, Databases, Software Debugging, Distributed Systems, Human Resources Information System (HRIS), Caching, Database Performance, Production Code, Build Tools
- **Published:** October 30, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=740508439e7c247a

## About the Role

* Staff-level experience designing and scaling complex production systems where correctness and auditability are critical.
 * Strong engineering fundamentals across architecture, data modeling, distributed systems, databases, caching, and reliability.
 * A track record of setting technical direction and leading complex initiatives across multiple teams.
 * Strong product judgment and the ability to connect platform decisions to customer outcomes.
 * Excellent communication skills and comfort driving alignment across engineering, product, and non-technical stakeholders.
 * Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment where priorities and requirements evolve quickly.
 * Payroll experience is helpful but not required. We value engineers who have worked on other high-integrity domains where correctness, auditability, and customer trust are essential.

## Description

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help lead this work. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who wants to build mission-critical systems, set architectural direction, develop exceptional teams, and make payroll accurate, understandable, and dependable at global scale.

What you will do

 * Lead architecture and technical strategy for Rippling's payroll calculation systems.
 * Write critical production code and lead from the front on high-impact technical initiatives.
 * Design frameworks that make payroll logic configurable, versioned, testable, explainable, scalable, and easy to debug.
 * Leverage AI to make payroll logic easier to build, validate, explain, and operate, without compromising accuracy, auditability, or control.
 * Build systems that support enterprise-scale payroll for large employers with complex legal-entity structures and approval workflows.
 * Help expand Rippling's native payroll capabilities across new countries and jurisdictions.
 * Drive improvements in distributed systems, database performance, caching, reliability, and operability.
 * Partner cross-functionally with product, design, payroll operations, HRIS, and other engineering teams to deliver end-to-end customer outcomes.
 * Mentor senior and mid-level engineers across payroll calculation areas such as platform, earnings, deductions, taxes, and jurisdiction-specific logic.