Senior Director of Engineering
Required skills
- software engineering
- scaling engineering organizations
- customer-facing products
- enterprise SaaS
- engineering managers
- technical leaders
- architectural discussions
- product vision
- technical strategies
- high-growth environments
Nice to have
- financial technology
- financial infrastructure
- automation
- emerging technologies
- financial operations
Role summary
Rippling is seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the growth of its Spend organization, focusing on financial technology, enterprise software, and large-scale distributed systems. This leadership role involves defining technical strategy, scaling engineering teams, and delivering innovative products. The ideal candidate will combine deep technical expertise with strong product instincts and organizational leadership, with a proven track record of building exceptional teams. Responsibilities include driving engineering vision, leading and developing high-performing teams, partnering with Product and Design, making architectural decisions for scalable systems, and establishing best practices for reliability, security, and quality. The role also involves identifying opportunities for automation and AI, mentoring leaders, and navigating ambiguity in a fast-paced environment.
About the Role
Rippling is building a unified platform that brings together the systems businesses rely on to manage their people, operations, and finances. Our Spend products are reimagining how companies manage and control business spending, bringing together financial workflows, automation, and real-time visibility into a single, seamless experience.
We're looking for a Senior Director of Engineering to help shape the next phase of growth for our Spend organization. This is a high-impact leadership opportunity at the intersection of financial technology, enterprise software, and large-scale distributed systems.
You'll play a critical role in defining technical strategy, scaling engineering teams, and delivering innovative products that solve complex problems for businesses of all sizes. We're looking for a leader who combines deep technical expertise with strong product instincts, organizational leadership, and a track record of building exceptional teams.
What You Will Do
- Drive the engineering vision, strategy, and execution for a growing portfolio of financial technology products.
- Build, lead, and develop high-performing engineering teams, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and innovation.
- Partner closely with Product, Design, and cross-functional leadership to define product strategy, prioritize investments, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
- Lead architectural and technical decisions across complex, highly scalable systems, balancing long-term platform investments with rapid product development.
- Establish engineering practices and organizational structures that enable teams to move quickly while maintaining high standards for reliability, security, and quality.
- Identify opportunities to leverage automation, AI, and emerging technologies to transform how businesses manage financial operations.
- Attract, mentor, and develop exceptional engineering leaders, building a strong leadership bench as the organization scales.
- Navigate ambiguity, make thoughtful tradeoffs, and drive execution across multiple teams and initiatives in a fast-paced environment.
What You Will Need
- 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience leading and scaling engineering organizations.
- A proven track record of building and delivering complex, customer-facing products at scale, ideally within fintech, financial infrastructure, or enterprise SaaS.
- Experience leading multiple engineering teams and developing engineering managers and senior technical leaders.
- Strong technical depth, with the ability to engage in architectural discussions, challenge technical decisions, and guide teams through complex engineering problems.
- Demonstrated success partnering with Product and business leaders to translate ambitious product visions into scalable technical strategies.
- Experience operating in high-growth environments, with a strong bias toward action, ownership, and execution.
- Exceptional leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence across organizations and align teams around shared priorities.
- A builder's mindset, strong product intuition, and a passion for developing both technology and people.
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.
Sample Rippling interview questions
- 1
Design a Reservation System for Airbnb
system designhard - 2
Merge a New Interval Merge a new interval into a list of non-overlapping intervals. Input: intervals = [[1,2],[3,5],[6,7],[8,10],[12,16]], newInterval = [4,8] Output: [[1,2],[3,10],[12,16]] Explanation: The new interval overlaps with [3,5], [6,7], and [8,10], merging them all into the unified block [3,10].
codingmedium - 3
Valid Word Abbreviation Determine if a string matches a valid word abbreviation. Input: word = "apple", abbr = "a2e" Output: FALSE Explanation: The abbreviation claims exactly 2 characters are skipped between 'a' and 'e', but "ppl" is actually 3 characters long.
codingmedium - 4
Clone an Undirected Graph Clone an undirected graph. Input: adjList = [[]] Output: [[]] Explanation: Creates a new, deeply cloned graph containing only one single node with zero connected neighbors.
codingmedium - 5
Split Array into Consecutive Subsequences Split an array into consecutive subsequences. Input: nums = [1,2,3,4,4,5] Output: FALSE Explanation: The numbers can form [1,2,3,4], but the remaining leftover group [4,5] is too short to form a valid sequence of length 3.
codingmedium
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