Product Lead, Variable Compensation

Rippling•San Francisco, CA

4d•$174,000 - $290,000

About The Position

Rippling is hiring a Product Lead to build Variable Compensation, a product that brings the administration of bonuses and commissions into its connected payroll platform. The product will connect compensation plan terms with the processes for calculating, approving, and paying compensation, using employee data, organizational changes, performance information, payroll infrastructure, and AI agents. The Product Lead will own the product vision, strategy, roadmap, execution, and outcomes, working with a dedicated engineering team to bring the product to market and scale it. The role will shape the product from its early stages, establishing reliable, transparent, and auditable workflows for compensation payments. As the business grows, there may be an opportunity to expand the role’s scope and help bring Rippling’s compensation products together into a broader suite. The position requires close collaboration with engineering, design, HRIS, payroll, talent, integrations, AI platform, go-to-market, implementation, and support teams. The Product Lead will stay close to customers and their operational workflows, translate complex rules and edge cases into product behavior, and use customer feedback and product performance to drive adoption and improvement. Rippling states that office-based employees—those living within a defined radius of a Rippling office—are expected under current policy to work in the office at least three days a week. The role offers competitive salary, benefits, and equity. US salary ranges vary by location, but no specific ranges are included in the provided description.

Requirements

At least 8 years of product management experience, or equivalent founder experience, with substantial ownership of a complex product area and accountability for outcomes.
Track record of bringing products from zero to one, making progress through ambiguity, and iterating toward customer adoption.
AI-native product judgment, including use of current AI tools, practical understanding of agents and LLM-based products, and a strong point of view on where they can provide clear customer value.
Experience with products where numerical accuracy, complex business logic, and reliability matter.
Strong product judgment and ability to translate complicated compensation rules and operational workflows into clear product behavior, including unexpected situations.
Strong ownership and bias toward action, with the ability to set strategy, make difficult tradeoffs, and work through the details required to ship and sustain a product.
Clear written and verbal communication, with the ability to align cross-functional partners and collaborate effectively.
Strong alignment with Rippling’s leadership principles, especially “Go and See”, “Push the Limits of Possible”, and “Are Right, A Lot”.

Nice To Haves

Experience in fintech, payments, data and analytics, or similarly stringent domains.
Compensation or payroll domain experience.

Responsibilities

Own the product vision, strategy, roadmap, and prioritization for Variable Compensation, guiding it from early releases through adoption and growth.
Build AI agents that interpret compensation plan terms, identify payment obligations, monitor eligibility, calculate amounts, and coordinate approvals and payouts.
Define product behavior for ambiguous terms, incomplete data, exceptions, and changing employee circumstances; establish controls, explanations, and auditability to support customer trust.
Use Rippling’s HRIS, payroll, talent, integrations, and AI platform to connect employee context and business data with compensation calculations and payments.
Research how payroll, finance, HR, and revenue teams administer compensation, identify breakdowns in manual processes, and prioritize valuable customer problems.
Lead execution with engineering and design, moving from customer insight to shipped product and working through data models, workflows, and edge cases.
Define success metrics, learn from adoption and real-world agent performance, and partner with go-to-market, implementation, and support teams to help customers adopt and use the product successfully.