About Rippling

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.

We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.

About the role

Rippling is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager (M8) to lead our Payroll Payments organization, owning the experience layer that powers how employers and employees move money.

This team sits at the center of one of Rippling’s most critical workflows—bridging payroll logic (“Run Management”) and the underlying payment rails to ensure money moves accurately, reliably, and at scale. You will lead a multi-layered team responsible for building the systems that generate and manage payment instructions for hundreds of thousands of employees, with volume reaching 500K+ instructions per day.

This is a highly cross-functional role partnering closely with Payments, Tax, Contractor, and Global Payroll teams. You will own both the employer and employee experience, while driving innovation in new product areas like contractor wallets and flexible payout methods.

This is a unique opportunity to be the first leader fully owning Payroll Payments at Rippling, shaping the strategy, organization, and product direction for a critical and rapidly growing domain.

What you will do

• Own the Payroll Payments experience: Lead the systems that define how money moves—from instruction generation (who, where, when) to execution readiness and recovery.
• Drive product and platform excellence: Build and scale products that directly impact employers and employees, including payroll readiness, failed payment handling, and contractor payout experiences.
• Lead a multi-layered org: Manage and grow a team of ~14–15 engineers, including engineering managers, across multiple sub-teams.
• Build the future of contractor payments: Own the “Balance” (wallet) product, enabling contractors to receive and manage earnings across multiple clients with flexible withdrawal methods.
• Operate at global scale: Ensure reliability and correctness across high-volume payment systems, with a strong focus on operational excellence and fault tolerance.
• Partner cross-functionally: Work closely with Payments infrastructure, Tax, and Global Payroll teams to solve complex cross-border and compliance-driven challenges.
• Drive cross-timezone execution: Collaborate with distributed teams (including IST) to deliver high-quality outcomes across global workflows.
• Shape long-term strategy: Define the roadmap for Payroll Payments, with the opportunity to expand ownership into broader product-layer payments over time.

What you will need

• Proven engineering leadership experience: Experience managing managers and leading orgs of 10+ engineers in high-scale, distributed systems environments.
• Strong product sense: Ability to balance technical excellence with user experience, particularly in product-heavy engineering organizations.
• Operational rigor: High bar for reliability, correctness, and system resilience—especially in critical financial or transactional systems.
• Experience with complex systems: Background in payments, fintech, payroll, or similarly complex domains is preferred but not required.
• Cross-functional leadership: Track record of partnering effectively with Product, Design, and other engineering teams to deliver end-to-end systems.
• Global collaboration experience: Comfortable working across time zones and leading distributed teams.
• Strong communication and ownership: Ability to operate with autonomy, drive clarity in ambiguous spaces, and influence senior stakeholders.

Additional Information

Rippling is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce and do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected characteristics, Rippling is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities who need assistance during the hiring process. To request a reasonable accommodation, please email accommodations@rippling.com

Rippling highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. For office-based employees (employees who live within a defined radius of a Rippling office), Rippling considers working in the office, at least three days a week under current policy, to be an essential function of the employee's role.

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; see which tier applies to your location here.

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone’s compensation–including a candidate’s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed below.