Why longtime Ripplers keep choosing to build here

Rippling India has grown 140% over the past two years and folks are staying put. Talk to anyone who has been with the company for a while, and you’ll hear a few common themes come up: a culture of ownership, recognition, a fast-paced environment, and opportunities for internal growth.

Rippling India is now the company’s largest office, home to teams across product, engineering, compliance, marketing, sales, and more. Whether in tech or non-tech roles, people here join Rippling for its mission and stay for the people they get to work with every day. 

Here are a few excerpts from longtime Ripplers, in their own words.

“When I joined Rippling eight years ago, we didn’t even have an office in India. Rippling’s ambition felt fundamentally different. The vision to build the OS for Work was bold and first-principles driven, the kind of mission that could create a generational company. I believed in the plan to make Rippling India the heart of engineering, not just a secondary site, and that bet has turned out to be one of the most rewarding decisions of my career. I wanted to build, and Rippling gave me the canvas, the pace, and the responsibility to do exactly that.

One moment I’ll never forget is when I got the opportunity to lead and build Rippling’s first design system with a small team of 2–3 incredibly talented engineers. Most startups only invest in something this foundational much later in their journey, but we made the call within our first couple of years and I’m proud we placed that long-term bet so early. It wasn’t the obvious or easiest decision at that stage, but we believed a strong UI foundation would compound over time as Rippling scaled. That early decision became a defining milestone for both our UX and the engineering culture we wanted to build from day one.

Rippling India has grown from a few builders in a co-working space to nearly 300 engineers driving core products end to end. There’s never been a moment where the work felt steady-state or repetitive. We’ve matured with stronger rigor, better cross-team alignment, and more structure, but we’ve kept our intensity and ownership. Flexibility has evolved too. Unlimited PTO, remote weeks, and paternity support made it possible to balance major life moments like marriage and parenthood without missing a beat.

Rippling rewards ownership, impact, and accountability, not titles or tenure. ICs operate like true owners, making fast, high-judgment calls without hand-holding. If you operate like an owner, there’s more than enough room to grow into roles that didn’t exist a year earlier. For me, stepping up to lead the UI Platform org came from taking on ambiguous challenges end to end and staying hands-on through execution.”

“When I joined, Rippling India was still scrappy, full of startup energy, building quickly and learning on the fly. Over the years, it’s transformed into a true innovation hub driving some of the company’s most critical product and infrastructure initiatives. The team here now operates with end-to-end ownership and autonomy, sitting at the same table as global peers. Process maturity has also grown significantly. Everything from hiring to onboarding to cross-functional syncs now runs through well-defined, scalable frameworks.

There’s no “that’s not my job” mindset here. It’s the way every Rippler truly takes ownership. If something’s broken, people fix it. We debate hard but execute harder. Leadership principles like “Push the limits of the possible” and “Challenge each other directly” are not just words on a wall; they’re lived daily across teams. You’ll see engineers jumping in on customer conversations, SDRs giving feedback on product messaging, or senior leaders rolling up their sleeves to debug with teams. The Silicon Valley Bank crisis in March 2023, without a doubt, is a moment to remember. SVB had collapsed unexpectedly, freezing millions of dollars in payroll funds. Watching our teams work through that weekend in complete sync, engineers, legal, finance, all moving faster than the crisis itself, was unforgettable. It reaffirmed why I chose Rippling: this is a company that runs toward complex problems, not away from them.

Ripplers combine intelligence with extreme ownership. Every conversation here pushes you to think harder, move faster, and perform better. There’s a culture of candor, where ideas matter more than hierarchy. Most importantly, there’s a shared obsession with building products that actually move the needle for customers. It’s that blend of smart peers, high-velocity execution, and a sense of shared purpose that’s kept me here for all these years.

What helped me was staying proactive about growth, being open about what I wanted next, seeking out harder problems, and consistently executing beyond my defined scope. Internal movement here is deeply merit-based. Rippling promotes trajectory, not tenure. If you’ve built impact and demonstrated the ability to raise the bar for your team, the org takes notice quickly. The company is deliberate about career ownership. If you’re hungry and capable, the system will meet you halfway. Rippling’s people systems now include milestone reviews and internal growth tracking, making it easier for someone to explore new opportunities or receive upward mobility based on tangible outcomes rather than politics. We have even built internal tools that we and our customers use that help us in managing and rewarding high performance.”

“I’ve always found new problem statements to solve here, so even after six and a half years, it never feels like I’m doing the same job. There’s always something exciting and challenging to work on. One constant I’ve seen from the start is how thoughtfully we plan and how fast we execute. It’s very much a “move fast, learn fast” culture. We’ve also become better at launching new products because we spend months using our own tools before releasing them to customers.

I’d say Rippling isn’t for everyone. It’s not an easy place to work, and what we’re building isn’t easy either. Since many of our customers are in the U.S., we often work across time zones. But the autonomy here is huge. Most leaders operate like founders themselves. I’ll never forget the time the whole company came together during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. Overnight, the bank collapse and government sanctions blocked in-flight payrolls, putting thousands of employees’ salaries at risk. Everyone at Rippling, from leadership to engineers, dropped everything to make sure our customers got paid on time. We raised funds overnight, fronted the payroll ourselves, and it turned into a true “Go to Western Union” moment for the company, doing whatever it takes for our customers.

People show up on time, are highly collaborative, and are super responsive even when something isn’t directly their task. It’s easy to find the right DRI or owner because everyone operates with a strong sense of ownership.

Our team size has almost doubled every year, which naturally creates a lot of opportunities for internal growth. Promotions happen fast because we’re always building something new that often hasn’t been done before. The best way to grow here is to take ownership and deliver results. That’s what really gets noticed.”

“When I joined Rippling in 2020, I moved from leading a team to taking on an individual contributor role for a completely new market. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I was drawn to the challenge and the conviction of the people building Rippling at the time. They told me, “You don’t know the market yet, but you do know how to build and lead. Once you learn the market, opportunities will come.” That made sense to me, so I took the leap.

I joined Rippling in 2020, right in the middle of COVID. Despite the uncertainty, the transition felt surprisingly smooth. Even though everything was remote, the mentorship and leadership support made it easy to feel connected. When I joined, I was the fifth SDR. Within a year, the team scaled rapidly, and I was promoted to manager, leading a team of eight. I still remember my onboarding when Matt MacInnis (COO at Rippling) personally ran the sessions. He told me something that has stayed with me: “There are better places to make a paycheck than Rippling. Rippling is going to be tough. But if you make it, you’ll be a powerful force here for the long term.”

Five years later, that’s still true. Rippling keeps me on my toes. It’s never dull. Every year has brought new challenges and new roles. We’ve built functions from scratch, delivered strong results, and moved on to the next challenge. Last year, I helped set up Rippling’s global outbound motion in India, and this year, we’re leading the company’s first GTM push for the India market. Building something new every year keeps it exciting, and seeing it succeed is the best reward.

Even with more than 3,000 employees, Rippling still operates like a startup. You can reach anyone, collaborate across teams, and make things happen fast. The processes are more refined now, but the culture of speed and ownership remains the same. Rippling also takes work-life balance seriously. We’re expected to finish work within our hours, take breaks when needed, and use unlimited PTO. I’ve always felt supported, not stretched.

What’s kept me here all these years is the combination of challenge, recognition, and motivation. Every year brings something new to prove myself, and my work has always been acknowledged through awards, performance reviews, and appreciation from leadership. When your work is seen and valued, you don’t think about leaving.”