Staff Software Engineer - Tax Platform

Role details

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