Forward Deployed Engineer

About Rippling

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.

Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.

We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.

About The Role

Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) at Rippling are customer-facing software engineers who bridge the gap between the complex business problems of our customers and the full power of the Rippling Platform.

You will work directly with some of Rippling’s largest and most strategic customers to understand how their businesses actually operate, identify the highest-impact problems to solve, and design and deliver custom solutions that make Rippling fit seamlessly into their reality.

This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy owning problems end-to-end — from discovery to deployment — and who are excited to build real, production software that directly drives customer outcomes.

What You Will Do

• Partner directly with customer stakeholders — from individual contributors to executives — to understand business processes, pain points, and success criteria.
• Own the full lifecycle of customer solutions, from discovery and scoping through build, deployment, and post-launch iteration.
• Build custom solutions on the Rippling Platform, including data connectors, custom apps, functions, workflows, data models, reports, and analytics by writing code in TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Go, and SQL, alongside Rippling’s no-code tooling.
• Translate ambiguous business requirements into clear technical designs and working software.
• Provide technical guidance and support throughout implementation, including troubleshooting, optimization, and adoption support.
• Identify opportunities where customer solutions can inform or extend native Rippling product capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with account teams, product managers, and engineers to align customer needs with platform capabilities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• 2+ years of professional software development experience.
• Strong proficiency in at least one of TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, or Go, with experience in SQL and data modeling.
• Ability to operate independently in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build trust with customers.
• Customer-centric mindset; prior experience in a customer-facing or consultative role is a plus.
• Solid project ownership and execution skills.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed (up to ~25%).

Key skills/competency

• Customer solutions
• Software development
• Technical consulting
• Problem-solving
• Project ownership
• TypeScript
• Python
• Go
• SQL
• Data modeling