Staff Software Engineer - Tax Platform

About Role

Rippling's Tax Platform is one of only ~5 companies globally that owns the full tax calculation and filing stack. We process over $30 billion in annual payroll for 1 million+ employees—growing 50% year-over-year. Our systems handle millions of payroll transactions across multiple countries, ensuring tax correctness across 4,000+ jurisdictions while staying compliant with constantly changing tax regulations.

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead technical strategy, drive architectural decisions, and shape the future of our tax infrastructure. You'll have function-wide impact and set the standard for engineering excellence across teams.

What You Will Do

• System Design: Lead architecture for mission-critical systems handling billions in tax calculations; make decisions that define how the platform scales for 50% YoY growth
• Ownership & Impact: Drive initiatives with function-wide visibility; your work shapes roadmaps and influences company strategy
• Engineering Excellence: Define and champion engineering standards across teams; establish patterns that scale with the organization
• Reliability & Correctness: Design systems where failure is not an option; build for auditability, correctness, and graceful degradation at scale
• Global Scale: Tackle architectural challenges of processing millions of payroll transactions across multiple countries with 4,000+ jurisdictions and evolving regulations
• Technical Leadership: Be the technical voice in cross-functional decisions; translate business needs into technical strategy

What You Will Have

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership
• Proven ability to architect large-scale distributed systems with high reliability requirements
• Deep expertise in any OOPs language and experience designing systems that other engineers build on
• Track record of driving technical strategy and influencing decisions across multiple teams
• Strong ownership mindset—you see problems through from identification to resolution
• Rigorous engineering practices with a focus on correctness, testing, and operational excellence
• Excellent communication skills; ability to represent engineering to leadership and stakeholders