staff software engineer

About the Role:

The Data Catalog team is the semantic intelligence layer of Ripplings platform. Our mission is to make Ripplings data schema — spanning millions of fields across every product — discoverable, trustworthy, and actionable for both humans and AI. We are the authoritative source of truth for "data about data" within Rippling.

We sit at the intersection of platform infrastructure and AI, powering core product surfaces like Workflow Automator, Reports, Supergroups, and Data Manager, while increasingly serving as the data backbone for Ripplings AI products — including the AI Assistant and AI Field Selection features.

What We Build

The team delivers across four strategic pillars:

• Data Discoverability: Catalog browse, search, and field-selection experiences used throughout Rippling, enabling users to find the most relevant data for their use case across a vast and growing schema.
• Data Enrichment: AI-generated semantic descriptions, glossary tagging, sampled values, usage signals, and RQL formula examples — adding business context that makes raw schema meaningful.
• Data Governance: PII classification, sensitive data flagging, compliance tagging, and integration with access controls and auditing infrastructure.
• Data Lifecycle: Upstream and downstream dependency tracking, lineage visualization, and event-driven metadata sync to ensure the Catalog stays live and accurate as Ripplings data model evolves.

You will: 

• Lead the Technical Roadmap: Design, develop, and maintain internet-scale, highly distributed systems and scalable services for the Data Catalog team.
• Think for the Future: Prototype with the newest AI tools to think about primitives that will be used to democratize development with Rippling. 
• Solve for Scale: Tackle our growing size and load and understand where we can be doing less work.
• Own the Stack: Work deeply with infrastructure to manage complex distributed systems that power every Rippling product.
• Operate as a Tech Lead: This is a "pure engineering" team. You will partner directly with other Platform Tech Leads and EMs (your primary customers) to define how Data Catalog’s core infrastructure evolves.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience in software development, preferably in fast-paced, dynamic environments.
• Solid understanding of CS fundamentals, architectures, and design patterns.
• Proven track record in building large-scale applications, APIs, and developer tools.
• Excellent at cross-functional collaboration, able to articulate technical concepts to non-technical partners.
• You thrive in a product-focused environment and are passionate about making an impact on customer experience.

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 accomodations@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 employees role.