Staff Software Engineer, Financial Crimes Engineering

At Ripple, we’re building a world where value moves like information does today. It’s big, it’s bold, and we’re already doing it. Through our crypto solutions for financial institutions, businesses, governments and developers, we are improving the global financial system and creating greater economic fairness and opportunity for more people, in more places around the world. And we get to do the best work of our career and grow our skills surrounded by colleagues who have our backs. 

If you’re ready to see your impact and unlock incredible career growth opportunities, join us, and build real world value.

The Work:

At Ripple, protecting our network against financial crime is mission-critical. The Financial Crimes Engineering team is building the services and integrations that power AML, sanctions screening, and fraud prevention across all Ripple products.

Our Next Chapter Includes:

• Expanding Ripple’s use of leading vendor solutions for AML, sanctions, and fraud.
• Building the orchestration, data flows, and observability layers that make these tools seamless and reliable at scale.
• Designing systems that are auditable, transparent, and trusted by regulators and customers worldwide.

If you’re a Staff-level engineer who thrives on vendor integrations, distributed systems, and high-scale architecture, this is your opportunity.

Why This Role Matters:

Every Ripple transaction must be trusted, safe, and compliant. As a technical anchor for a small, high-impact team, you will:

• Protect Ripple at scale – Integrate and scale industry-leading vendors for AML, sanctions screening, and fraud detection.
• Engineer the glue – Build orchestration, pipelines, and observability layers that ensure compliance systems run with enterprise-grade reliability.
• Shape architecture company-wide – Partner with Compliance, Product, and Engineering to design how Ripple manages financial crime risk.
• Lead with impact – Mentor engineers and help grow a team that balances speed, rigor, and innovation.

This isn’t just about writing code — it’s about ensuring Ripple’s financial crime defenses are world-class and ready for global scale.

What You’Ll Do:

• Lead the design and development of cloud-native services that orchestrate vendor systems for AML, sanctions, and fraud.
• Partner with Compliance and Product to deliver integrations that meet both regulatory and business needs.
• Build observability, testing, and resilience frameworks around vendor platforms to ensure production-grade reliability.
• Contribute to architectural decisions that strengthen Ripple’s ability to scale securely and compliantly.
• Champion engineering excellence in design, reliability, and operations.
• Mentor engineers and help grow a lean, high-performing team.

What You'Ll Bring:

• Deep backend engineering experience in modern, cloud-native, distributed systems.
• Proven track record designing and delivering large-scale integrations in complex or regulated environments.
• Strong API design and vendor integration skills (REST and/or gRPC).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS).
• Ability to navigate technical complexity while delivering business value.
• Leadership skills: can set technical direction, mentor others, and influence cross-team decisions.

Preferred (but not required)

• Experience with our current stack: Java + Spring Boot.
• We welcome candidates from other backend stacks (Go, Kotlin, C#, Python, Rust, etc.) who can quickly learn JVM technologies.
• Event-driven architecture (Kafka, SNS/SQS, etc.).
• Domain knowledge in fintech, regtech, AML, sanctions, or fraud systems.

For positions that will be based in CA, the annual salary range for this position is below. Actual salaries may vary based on numerous factors including, among other things, an individual applicant’s experience and qualifications for the position. This range does not include equity or additional compensation, such as bonuses or commissions. CA Annual Base Salary Range$192,000—$216,000 USD

Who We Are:

Do Your Best Work

• The opportunity to build in a fast-paced start-up environment with experienced industry leaders
• A learning environment where you can dive deep into the latest technologies and make an impact.  A professional development budget to support other modes of learning.
• Thrive in an environment where no matter what race, ethnicity, gender, origin, or culture they identify with, every employee is a respected, valued, and empowered part of the team.
• In-office collaboration for moments that matter is important to our culture, and we give managers and teams the flexibility to decide which 10+ days a month they come in. 
• Bi-weekly all-company meeting - business updates and ask me anything style discussion with our Leadership Team
• We come together for moments that matter which include team offsites, team bonding activities, happy hours and more!

Take Control of Your Finances

• Competitive salary, bonuses, and equity
• Competitive benefits that cover physical and mental healthcare, retirement, family forming, and family support
• Employee giving match
• Mobile phone stipend

Take Care of Yourself

• R&R days so you can rest and recharge
• Generous wellness reimbursement and weekly onsite & virtual programming
• Generous vacation policy - work with your manager to take time off when you need it
• Industry-leading parental leave policies. Family planning benefits.
• Catered lunches, fully-stocked kitchens with premium snacks/beverages, and plenty of fun events

Benefits listed above are for full-time employees. 

Ripple is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We do not discriminate against qualified employees or applicants because of race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, sexual identity, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, military status, or any other characteristic protected by local law or ordinance.   Please find our UK/EU Applicant Privacy Notice and our California Applicant Privacy Notice for reference.