Principal Security Engineer

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.

• Lead the architecture and implementation of complex security initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams and technical domains.
• Incorporate the use of agentic AI technologies into security capabilities within both product and infrastructure technologies
• Help business leaders understand and navigate risk tradeoffs to ensure Rippling is making well informed security decisions.
• Design scalable security systems across areas such as identity and access management, cloud infrastructure, internal tooling, developer infrastructure, and third-party SaaS.
• Translate ambiguous or fragmented security problems into clear technical architectures, roadmaps, and executable engineering plans.
• Rationalize requirements and technical roadmaps across three or more teams into cohesive systems and long-term solutions.
• Partner with senior engineers and engineering leaders across Security, Infrastructure, Developer Experience, IT, and Product to drive alignment on critical technical decisions.
• Build prototypes, write production code, and remain hands-on throughout the lifecycle of the systems you design.
• Identify architectural weaknesses and systemic security risks before they become incidents, then drive durable engineering solutions.
• Establish technical patterns and frameworks that improve security while allowing engineering teams to continue moving quickly.
• Raise the technical bar across the security organization through design reviews, mentorship, and influence across engineering.

• →Significant experience designing, building, and operating complex systems in large-scale cloud or enterprise environments.
• →A track record of leading technically complex initiatives involving multiple engineering teams, competing requirements, and cross-functional stakeholders.
• →Deep expertise in one or more security domains, with identity and access management (IAM), authentication, authorization, or identity architecture experience particularly relevant.
• →Strong understanding of modern cloud and enterprise architecture, including security boundaries, workload isolation, service-to-service communication, and access-control systems.
• →Recent hands-on engineering experience and the ability to prototype, write code, and work directly with modern development tooling.
• →Experience building defensive agentic systems and integrating them with dynamic software development and operations.
• →Ability to move fluidly between high-level system architecture and detailed implementation decisions.
• →Strong technical judgment and the ability to make pragmatic tradeoffs between security, scalability, developer experience, and business needs.
• →Demonstrated ability to influence senior technical stakeholders without relying on organizational authority.
• →High degree of ownership, urgency, and bias toward action in ambiguous environments.
• →Experience and trajectory matter more to us than a specific number of years, but candidates will have 10+ years experience solving complex engineering and security problems.

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.