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

As a design lead for Data Cloud, you'll own how customers explore, analyze, and act on the operational data that flows through Rippling. Every employee event, every approval, every dollar spent, every system change generates data that today lives inside individual products. Your work turns that into something customers can actually use: queryable, visualizable, governed, and connected to the systems they already trust.

Designers at Rippling are product builders. You'll work with PMs, engineers, and other designers to define problems, explore solutions, and ship experiences that change customer behavior. The work here starts in LLMs to clarify thinking, moves into tools like Cursor and Claude Code for refinement, then ships to customers. Designers are involved through iteration, testing, and launch. They own the outcome of their work along with their partners.

If you want to design the interface between Rippling's data and the people who need to make decisions with it we want to talk to you.

What you will do

Own the end-to-end Data Cloud experience from custom reports and dashboards through semantic models, query interfaces, and warehouse integrations.
Design how customers move from a plain-language question ("show me attrition by team since January") to a validated answer grounded in Rippling's underlying data graph.
Build primitives that make complex data approachable: visualizations, filtering, drill-downs, schema explorers, and permissions for sensitive workforce and financial data.
Design for two audiences at once: business users who want fast, trustworthy answers, and data teams who want pipelines, models, and parity with their warehouse.
Use LLMs to accelerate your process. Use them to clarify problem spaces, generate requirements, and pressure-test designs before they reach production.
Prototype using AI-assisted tools to explore data flows and validate solutions with real interactions, not just static mocks.
Share patterns, tooling discoveries, and AI workflows across the design organization to raise the bar for everyone.

What you will need

A portfolio of high-impact products delivered from concept through launch, ideally including analytics, BI, query builders, or other data-heavy surfaces. We care more about craft and outcomes than years in seat or specific data domain experience.
Some comfort with the language of data: schemas, joins, aggregations, semantic layers, warehouses. You don't need to write SQL daily, but you need to think like someone who could.
Active use of LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) in your design workflow whether for research, requirements, copy, or exploration.
Comfort with AI-assisted prototyping tools (Cursor, Claude Code, or similar), even if you're not writing production code.
A strong eye for craft, both interaction and visual, with the ability to make dense information feel calm and legible.
Exceptional communication skills, making abstract concepts understandable and guiding cross-functional partners through tough decisions.
If you don't meet every requirement but are excited about the role, we encourage you to apply. Skills transfer in unexpected ways, and diverse perspectives often lead to the most innovative solutions.

If you don't meet every requirement but are excited about the role, we encourage you to apply. Skills transfer in unexpected ways, and diverse perspectives often lead to the most innovative solutions.

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.

Product Design Lead, Data Cloud