Product Design Lead AI

Rippling has appointed Adrian Ludwig as chief security officer, bringing over 20 years of experience securing global-scale platforms. Ludwig previously led Android Security at Google, served as CISO at Atlassian, and most recently worked as chief architect and CISO at Tools for Humanity. Ludwig began his career as a teenager working for the US Department of Defense on cryptographic vulnerabilities. He later helped secure Adobe's early web presence and developed mobile security models protecting billions of users. At Rippling, he will oversee global security strategy across product security, infrastructure protection, trust and risk. The San Francisco-based company, which provides integrated HR, payroll, IT and spend management software, has raised $1.8 billion from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund and Sequoia.

Renowned security Architect Adrian Ludwig joins Rippling as Chief Security Officer. Former Google & Atlassian Security Professional Brings More Than Two Decades of Experience Securing Global-scale Platforms SAN FRANCISCO-(BUSINESS WIRE)-Rippling, a leading business software company, announced the appointment of Adrian Ludwig as Chief Security Officer, bringing to the company one of the technology industry's most accomplished security leaders. Ludwig joins Rippling with more than two decades of experience securing global-scale platforms and advising organizations at the forefront of cloud, mobile, and identity innovation. His career has been defined by building security capabilities during periods of fundamental technological shift and transforming security into a driver of product velocity, customer trust, and business growth. Recruited as a teenager by the U.S. Department of Defense to identify vulnerabilities in cryptographic and networked systems, Ludwig has operated at the leading edge of cybersecurity ever since. He went on to help secure the early web at Adobe and shape the modern mobile security model as Director of Android Security at Google, protecting billions of users worldwide. Later he scaled trust and cloud security as Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Trust Officer at Atlassian. Most recently, as Chief Architect and CISO at Tools for Humanity, he led the development of one of the industry's most ambitious efforts in privacy-preserving, global proof-of-human identity infrastructure. "Rippling is redefining how companies run their entire business on a single platform, and that only works if trust is absolute. Adrian has built security for technologies used by billions of people and millions of businesses. As we secure our platform and customers in the rapidly evolving AI era, he understands how to make security foundational to innovation, not a constraint. That is a game-changing capability for our customers and for our company," said Rippling Chief Technology Officer Albert Strasheim. At Rippling, Ludwig will lead the company's global security strategy across product security, infrastructure protection, trust, and risk. His mandate is to ensure that as customers consolidate more of their workforce and business operations on Rippling's platform, security is a deeply embedded architectural advantage. Across each of his roles, Ludwig has championed a model in which security is engineered into products as a core primitive, enabling speed, resilience, and trust rather than acting as a gatekeeper. His appointment underscores Rippling's long-term commitment to delivering security that scales seamlessly with customers, deepening the company's commitment to an integrated IT and security infrastructure that helps organizations from high-growth startups to the world's largest enterprises manage devices, identities, and data with confidence. "Rippling is building one of the most important business systems of record for the modern company. When a platform becomes that central to how organizations operate, security cannot be a layer added later. It has to be foundational to the architecture," said Rippling Chief Security Officer Adrian Ludwig. "My focus is to make world-class security an invisible, reliable constant for every customer, so they can move faster with complete confidence." About Rippling Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, Payroll, IT, and Spend - globally. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and IT. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system. Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.8B from the top investors in the world, including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, and Bedrock.

Rippling feature deep dive for 2026 planning: what shipped recently and why it matters. Rippling's advantage has never been a single feature. Its power comes from how identity, policy, permissions, payroll, devices, spend, and integrations all operate on a shared employee data model. What changed heading into 2026 is not that Rippling introduced workflows, automation, or analytics. Those primitives already existed. What changed is that Rippling spent late 2025 hardening the platform around the real failure points that emerge once organizations scale: * unsafe configuration changes * approval bottlenecks * access governance drift * hiring systems that move fast but lack accountability * compliance that works "in theory" but breaks locally How do these changes alter how Rippling should be implemented, governed, and operated in 2026? 1) Sandbox: the quiet feature that changes everything. What shipped. Rippling introduced a Sandbox environment, allowing admins to test workflows, permissions, onboarding flows, and configuration changes before deploying them to production. Eliminate risks when launching changes with Sandbox Why this is a real inflection point. Most serious Rippling incidents are not software failures. They are process failures: * a permission change that unintentionally expands access * a workflow edit that breaks an edge case * a payroll or benefits rule adjusted without testing downstream impact Sandbox enables something Rippling environments historically lacked: change discipline. It allows release management practices - test, validate, publish - without risking production stability. This aligns with where HR and PeopleOps are heading in 2026: more automation and AI, with governance and guardrails as the limiting factor. SHRM: Top HR Trends for 2026 For organizations running Rippling at scale, Sandbox should be standard for: * permission model changes * onboarding/offboarding workflow edits * payroll, time, or benefits configuration changes 2) bulk approvals and Supergroups: Rippling is optimizing for volume. December addressed two scaling bottlenecks: * Bulk approval of thousands of requests in a single flow Save hours by bulk approving thousands of requests at once * Bulk Supergroup import with matching and deduplication Quickly build Supergroups using bulk import Why this matters in practice. Once organizations pass a few hundred employees, friction rarely comes from missing features. It comes from throughput: * approvals backing up during payroll and spend cycles * Supergroups drifting as they're manually maintained * reorganizations triggering brittle, high-risk access changes These releases reduce operational drag and make it feasible to keep access and approvals clean at scale - especially when headcount growth outpaces admin capacity. This shift mirrors broader 2026 dynamics: cost pressure and AI adoption are pushing HR and Talent teams to increase output without adding operators. Gartner: Top Talent Acquisition Trends for 2026 3) AI Application Review: speed without abdication. * AI-powered Application Review to surface top candidates based on defined criteria Find top candidates in seconds with AI-powered Application Review * Context-aware hiring flow controls (fields required/hidden/editable by worker type) Gain even greater control over hiring flows Why this is the right direction. The strategic shift is not simply automation - it is accountability. Rippling's approach keeps: * criteria definition human-owned * AI limited to prioritization rather than decision-making * structured hiring data enforced upstream This reflects the dominant HR position heading into 2026: AI should accelerate recruiters while preserving transparency, auditability, and human judgment. Gartner: AI in HR In practice, AI Application Review succeeds or fails based on foundations: * clean job architecture * consistent hiring fields * clear ownership of decision criteria 4) access assignments: HR and IT finally operate on the same timeline. Why this matters operationally. In modern organizations, HR events are security events. These updates tighten the relationship between employee lifecycle and access lifecycle through: * previewability before changes take effect * timing precision aligned with payroll and legal events * reduced access drift over time 5) Finance and spend: operability over features. December focused on reducing friction for finance teams: Why this matters in 2026. Finance adoption hinges on day-to-day operability: * how quickly policies can evolve * how easily data can be shared externally * how cleanly Rippling coexists with ERP and accounting systems These improvements align with broader business pressures around cost control, transparency, and efficiency. Deloitte Human Capital Trends Global compliance: depth over breadth. Rippling's late-2025 releases emphasize jurisdiction-specific depth rather than surface-level coverage: For 2026 planning, "global" increasingly means locally correct and auditable, not merely supported. What to prioritize in 2026 if Rippling is core to your stack. * Change governance Make Sandbox the default for any configuration that touches permissions, payroll, time, or workflows. * Access architecture Treat Supergroups as infrastructure. Use bulk operations to prevent drift. * Hiring systems with guardrails Deploy AI only where structured data and ownership already exist. * Finance operability Optimize for policy velocity, clean exports, and coexistence with ERP systems. * Integration maturity Treat integrations as the multiplier once Rippling becomes the hub: Final takeaway. Rippling's late-2025 releases are not flashy. They're foundational. * scale * safety * governance * cross-functional execution Those pressures define PeopleOps, HR, Finance, and IT leadership in 2026. The organizations that benefit most from Rippling will not be the ones that enable the most features - but the ones that adopt a disciplined operating model around them. That is the difference between using Rippling and running people operations on Rippling. Rippling Platform Ravin brings a mix of HR, tech, and project management experience to his role as a Rippling Consultant. He's passionate about helping organizations streamline their operations and get the most out of Rippling's platform. Currently completing his Tech MBA at Schulich, Ravin is always curious about how tech can make work better. When he's not configuring, you'll find him kickboxing, planning his next bike ride, or perfecting his spikeball serve. You may also like. The end of the career ladder: how high performers actually grow in 2026. It's 2026, and career ladders are breaking down as flatter organizations, faster skill change, and AI reduce traditional promotion paths. Research shows high performers now grow by expanding scope, building in-demand skills, moving laterally, and earning trust through outcomes - not by waiting for titles. Employees must manage careers as portfolios of skills and impact, while PeopleOps and HR must redefine growth around scope and mobility, enable managers in leaner orgs, and ensure fair access to opportunity or risk losing top talent. 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