Rippling is hiring: Product Design Director, Core (San Francisco) in San Francis

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. 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 365all within 90 seconds. At Rippling, design is at the core of our mission to free smart people to tackle hard problems. We help teams automate the mundane, surface insights instantly, and operate with clarity and confidence. In a world of outdated, bloated legacy products, were building business software thats modern, streamlined, and deeply considered. As Product Design Director for Core Products, youll lead design at the heart of Ripplings vision for how companies support, develop, and organize their people. Core Products are the essential building blocks of that vision: HR Management (compensation, compliance, services); Talent (recruiting, headcount planning, performance, surveys, learning); Benefits (administration, PEO, brokerage, flex benefits, 401k); and Workforce Management (time and attendance, scheduling, leave, time off, mobile, and chat). they are deeply interconnected, and they set the stage for how customers experience every part of Rippling. You will define how millions of people are hired, scheduled, developed, supported, and rewarded, and how those experiences weave together into one seamless platform. While competitors stitch together fragmented systems, Rippling is building the worlds first truly unified workforce management platform. Our mission is to abstract away staggering complexity and deliver a platform our customers can run their entire business on. This is design at its most ambitious: shaping not just features, but the architecture, patterns, and connective tissue of a unified platform. Set the vision and quality bar for Ripplings Core Products, making them powerful enough for admins while intuitive enough for every manager and employee Unify workflows across HR Management, Talent, Benefits, and Workforce Management into one coherent platform with consistent patterns, policies, and experiences Design for global scale, ensuring workflows adapt seamlessly to different markets, languages, currencies, and compliance environments Make the fundamentals effortless, so everyday tasks like onboarding, scheduling, performance reviews, and benefits enrollment feel automatic rather than administrative Build, mentor, and scale a world-class design team of managers and individual contributors, ensuring strong critique culture, sharp judgment, and a high bar for execution at every level Partner with Product, Engineering, and cross-functional leaders to make fast, high-quality decisions and turn complex constraints into competitive advantages Stay close to customers, translating their pain points into design priorities that improve adoption, trust, and measurable business impact 8+ years of product design experience, including 5+ years leading design teams and at least 2+ years managing managers ~ A track record of bringing relentless customer focus to high-impact projects and driving strategic business outcomes through design ~ Strong systems thinking, with experience leading the design of integrated suites or ecosystems ~ Proven success hiring, leading, and scaling design teams at both startups and established companies ~ A history of developing designers and helping them grow to do the best work of their careers 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. 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.