Staff Software Engineer

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 We are seeking a new Staff Software Engineer to join the Platform Engineering team of our Custody department. In this role, you will own the design and development of secure enclave-based platforms used to isolate and protect our most critical cryptographic operations. You will engage with different trusted execution environments (TEEs) and you will define how Ripple Custody deploys highly sensitive components in strongly isolated environments while maintaining reliability, operability, and developer velocity. You will work where distributed systems, applied cryptography, cloud infrastructure, and security engineering converge. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who can design deep platform primitives, guide architecture across teams, and raise the security bar for custody infrastructure. WHAT YOU'LL DO • Design, build, and operate secure enclave infrastructure for cryptographic workloads, including signing, key handling, authorization, and policy enforcement. • Develop platform abstractions that make enclave-based deployment reliable, observable, and usable by internal engineering teams. • Evaluate and integrate trusted execution technologies across cloud providers, including AWS Nitro Enclaves, GCP confidential computing offerings, and IBM HPVS. • Build secure communication patterns between enclaves and external services, including attestation, encrypted channels, service identity, and request validation. • Partner with cryptography, security, infrastructure, and product engineering teams to define secure architectures for custody-critical systems. • Lead threat modeling, design reviews, and implementation reviews for high-assurance components. • Improve operational maturity around enclave workloads, including deployment, monitoring, incident response, key rotation, recovery, and disaster scenarios. • Mentor senior engineers and influence technical direction across the Platform organization. • Contribute to security standards, engineering guidelines, and long-term platform strategy. WHAT YOU'LL BRING • 10+ years of experience building production software, infrastructure, or distributed systems, with significant experience in security-sensitive and high-reliability environments. • Hands-on experience with enclave-based or confidential computing platforms used to isolate sensitive workloads, such as AWS Nitro Enclaves, Google Confidential Space / Confidential VMs, IBM Hyper Protect Virtual Servers, Azure Confidential Computing, Intel SGX, AMD SEV-SNP, Intel TDX, or similar technologies. • Strong hands-on programming experience in systems or backend languages such as Rust, Go, C, C++, or Java, with the ability to build reliable, maintainable services and platform components. • Practical experience designing and operating systems that protect highly sensitive data, including secrets, cryptographic keys, signing material, or privileged workloads. • Strong understanding of applied cryptography concepts, including encryption, digital signatures, key management, secure channels, attestation, and protection of data at rest, in transit, and in use. • Deep knowledge of Linux, operating system fundamentals, networking, process isolation, and hardened runtime environments. • Experience building or operating cloud-native infrastructure, including deployment automation, observability, service identity, access control, and production incident response. • Ability to reason clearly about trust boundaries, threat models, failure modes, and defense-in-depth controls. • Experience leading complex technical projects across teams, including architecture definition, technical design, implementation guidance, and mentoring senior engineers. • Preferred: Experience customising Linux kernels, building minimal operating environments, hardening OS images, or working close to hardware, virtualisation, or hypervisor boundaries. • Preferred: Experience with HSMs, MPC, threshold signing, secure key ceremonies, custody infrastructure, wallet systems, payment systems, blockchain infrastructure, or other high-assurance cryptographic platforms. 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.