About the Team
Rippling's Tax Platform is of ~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 Senior Software Engineer who takes ownership of complex problems, designs robust systems, and delivers high-quality solutions that directly impact millions of tax calculations.
Why This Role
Rare Opportunity
You'd be joining of ~5 companies in the world that owns the full tax stack. ADP took 70+ years, Paychex 50+ years, Paycom 25+ years—Rippling built it in 10. Everyone else licenses from vendors. At Rippling, you own the engine.
Uniquely Hard Technical Challenges
- Real-time at scale: Sub-second tax calculations for payroll preview, batch processing of millions of records at month-end, with perfect consistency across retries
- Integration complexity: Filing to thousands of agencies via PDF, XML, fixed-width files, SFTP, web portals, APIs—and yes, some still require paper mail
- Testing without ground truth: No "tax oracle" exists; you'll build validation systems for millions of edge cases across 50 states × 12 months × multiple entity types
- Historical accuracy: Must calculate taxes using rules from any past date as regulations constantly change
The Big Bets You'll Contribute To
AI-Driven Global Tax Engine
with explainable AI for full audit defensibility
Massive System Scaling
to support 100x current volume and enterprise-grade companies
Expanding International Support
to 20+ countries, each with unique tax systems
Distributed Transactional Systems
handling $100B+ in tax payments
Automating Tax Filing
to minimize manual intervention at scale
What You'll Build
- FQL (Filing Query Language): Our proprietary DSL encoding tax rules across 4,000+ jurisdictions
What You Will Do
- System Design: Architect scalable, reliable systems that handle billions of dollars in tax calculations with zero tolerance for error
- Ownership & Impact: Own features end-to-end—from design through production—with direct visibility into business outcomes
- Engineering Excellence: Set the bar for code quality, testing practices, and technical documentation within your team
- Reliability & Correctness: Build systems where accuracy is non-negotiable; a single bug can mean compliance failures across thousands of companies
- Global Scale: Solve challenges unique to processing millions of payroll transactions across multiple countries with 4,000+ jurisdictions and evolving regulations
- Collaboration: Partner with compliance, product, and platform teams to translate complex tax requirements into elegant technical solutions
What You Will Have
- 5+ years of software engineering experience
- Strong system design skills with experience building distributed, high-reliability systems
- Proficiency in Python; experience with Django or similar frameworks that follow the MVC pattern (layered architecture).
- Track record of owning and delivering impactful projects autonomously
- Rigorous approach to correctness—you write tests, handle edge cases, and think about failure modes
- Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity in complex problem spaces
- Clear communication and ability to influence technical decisions
Nice to Have
- Experience in fintech, payroll, or tax domains
- Background in compliance-critical systems where correctness is paramount
- Experience with domain-specific languages or rule engines
- Familiarity with MongoDB, Temporal, or event-driven architectures
Tech Stack
- Languages: Python, FQL (proprietary tax DSL), Go
- Framework: Django, MongoEngine
- Database: MongoDB, Redis, PostGre
Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Temporal
Observability: Buildkite, Datadog, Sentry
