Product Lead, Variable Compensation

About the role

Bonuses and commissions are a meaningful part of how people get paid and some of the hardest payments for companies to manage. The rules live in offer letters and compensation plans, the inputs are scattered across employee records and business systems, and teams rely on spreadsheets to figure out who is owed what and when. Payroll often receives the final number without the context behind it.

Rippling has the opportunity to bring that entire process into one connected system. With employee data, organizational changes, performance information, and payroll already on our platform, we can connect the terms of a compensation plan to the work of calculating, approving, and paying it.

We’re looking for a Product Lead to build Variable Compensation around AI agents from the start. Imagine an agent that reads a signed offer letter, identifies a multi-installment sign-on bonus, asks a payroll administrator to approve it, schedules the payments, and monitors any conditional requirements to confirm they’re met before releasing the payments. The same approach can extend to referral and retention bonuses, performance incentives, and increasingly complex sales commissions—taking work off customers’ plates while giving them visibility and control over every payment.

Variable Compensation fills a critical gap in Rippling’s payroll offering and has the potential to become a substantial business of its own. With foundational capabilities entering alpha, you’ll join early enough to shape the product from the ground up – backed by Rippling’s employee data, payroll infrastructure, AI platform, and established distribution.

You will own the vision, strategy, and execution, working with a dedicated engineering team to bring the product to market and scale it. As the business grows, there’s an opportunity to expand your scope and help bring Rippling’s compensation products together into a broader suite.

What you will do

• Own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for Variable Compensation. Make the prioritization calls that take the product from early releases to adoption and growth.
• Build agents that carry compensation workflows through to completion. Define how agents interpret plan terms, identify payment obligations, monitor eligibility, calculate amounts, and coordinate approvals and payouts.
• Set a high bar for accuracy and trust. Define how the product handles ambiguous terms, incomplete data, exceptions, and changing employee circumstances. Build the controls, explanations, and auditability customers need to trust it with employee pay.
• Use Rippling’s connected platform to solve the whole problem. Leverage HRIS, payroll, talent, integrations, and AI platform teams to connect employee context and business data with compensation calculations and payment.
• Stay close to customers and the details of their work. Understand how payroll, finance, HR, and revenue teams administer compensation today, where manual processes break down, and which problems are most valuable to solve first.
• Lead execution with a small, focused team. Work closely with engineering and design, move quickly from customer insight to shipped product, and dig into data models, workflows, and edge cases when needed.
• Own outcomes beyond launch. Define success metrics, learn from adoption and real-world agent performance, and partner with go-to-market, implementation, and support teams to build a product customers can adopt and use successfully.

What you will need

• 8+ years of product management experience, or equivalent founder experience, with substantial ownership of a complex product area and accountability for outcomes.
• A track record of bringing products from zero to one, making progress through ambiguity, and iterating toward customer adoption.
• AI-native product judgment. You use current AI tools, understand how agents and LLM-based products behave in practice, and have a strong point of view on where they can create clear customer value.
• Experience with products where numerical accuracy, complex business logic, and reliability matter. Fintech, payments, data and analytics, or similarly stringent domains are especially relevant.
• Strong product judgment. You can translate complicated compensation rules and operational workflows into clear product behavior, including when something unexpected happens.
• A deep sense of ownership and a bias toward action. You can set the strategy, make difficult tradeoffs, and work through the details required to ship and sustain the product.
• Clear written and verbal communication, with the ability to align cross-functional partners and collaborate effectively.
• Compensation or payroll domain experience is helpful, but not required.
• Strong alignment with Rippling’s leadership principles, especially “Go and See”, “Push the Limits of Possible”, and “Are Right, A Lot”.

If you don’t meet every qualification listed, we still encourage you to apply. Skills and experiences can show up in many forms, and we value diverse perspectives and backgrounds.

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 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.