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.
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.
- 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.
Skills Required
- 10+ years of experience building production software, infrastructure, or distributed systems
- Strong hands-on programming experience in Rust, Go, C, C++, or Java
- Practical experience designing and operating systems that protect highly sensitive data
- Strong understanding of applied cryptography concepts
- Deep knowledge of Linux, operating system fundamentals, networking, and process isolation
- Experience building or operating cloud-native infrastructure
- Experience leading complex technical projects across teams
- Preferred hands-on experience with enclave-based platforms
- Preferred experience customizing Linux kernels and building minimal operating environments
- Preferred experience with high-assurance cryptographic platforms
Ripple Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Ripple and has not been reviewed or approved by Ripple.
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Healthcare Strength — Comprehensive coverage, including employer-paid medical, dental, and vision from day one, is emphasized alongside wellbeing resources and stipends. This indicates strong foundational healthcare support as part of total rewards.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave of substantial duration and inclusive family-forming benefits (via fertility support) are highlighted. These offerings signal robust backing for diverse paths to parenthood.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible or unlimited PTO paired with additional company-wide recharge days points to ample time-off provisions. Public materials also reference generous closures that facilitate periodic rest.
Ripple Insights
What We Do
Ripple provides one frictionless experience to send money globally using the power of blockchain technology. By joining Ripple’s growing global network, financial institutions can process their customers’ payments anywhere in the world instantly, reliably and cost-effectively. Banks and payment providers can use the digital asset XRP to further reduce their costs and access new markets. Founded in 2012, Ripple's vision is to enable a world where value moves as seamlessly as information flows today—an Internet of Value. Ripple is the only enterprise blockchain company today with products in commercial use. Ripple’s global payments network includes over 300 customers across 40+ countries and six continents.
