Chief Software Engineer

Visa•Bellevue, TX

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world. Join Visa and do work that matters — to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you. The Value‑Added Services Product Development (VAS PD) team drives diversification of Visa’s revenue through differentiated, network‑agnostic products that extend the power of the Visa ecosystem. Within VAS, the Risk and Security Solutions (RAS) team delivers mission‑critical, AI‑driven risk, fraud, authentication, and identity platforms serving issuers, merchants, fintechs, and partners at global scale. The Chief Software Engineer in the RAS Product Development team is a senior technical authority responsible for defining and executing enterprise‑scale technology strategy, cloud‑native architecture, and engineering excellence aligned to business outcomes. This role provides deep technical leadership across Acceptance and Authentication Risk platforms (Visa Enhanced Authentication, Visa Secure, Cardinal, Decision Manager) and Identity platforms (Identity Graph and Device Intelligence). This position requires hands‑on expertise in public cloud, distributed systems, security‑first design, and Generative / Agentic AI, with a strong focus on developer productivity, platform leverage, and client‑facing innovation.

Requirements

12+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 9 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 15+ years of relevant work experience.
15+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in architecting large‑scale, cloud‑native, distributed systems.
Strong proficiency in Java, Python, GoLang, and modern frameworks such as Spring Boot, Node.js, and React.
Demonstrated success applying Generative AI and autonomous agents to deliver order‑of‑magnitude productivity improvements and differentiated product features. Experience integrating LLMs, vector databases, prompt engineering, RAG, and AI governance into production platforms.
Hands‑on experience with AWS and/or Azure, including containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), serverless architectures, and CI/CD pipelines with strong DevSecOps practices.
Deep understanding of architectural patterns, trade‑off analysis, and long‑term platform evolution. Experience designing and operating active‑active, multi‑region, globally resilient systems.
Willingness and ability to contribute directly to production code, frameworks, and prototypes to validate ideas, unblock teams, and accelerate adoption of emerging technologies.
Extensive experience with RESTful and gRPC APIs, microservices architectures, service meshes, and event‑driven systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub, streaming platforms).
Strong foundation in API security, cryptography, data encryption, key management, and HSMs. Proven experience implementing security‑by‑design, zero‑trust, and defense‑in‑depth practices in regulated environments.
Proficiency with SQL and NoSQL data stores and distributed caching technologies such as Redis. Experience designing data models for high‑scale, low‑latency systems.
Proven ability to automate the entire SSDLC using automated testing, security scanning, quality gates, observability, and release orchestration to improve speed, reliability, and compliance.
Exceptional ability to lead, influence, and mentor engineering organizations. Strong communication skills to articulate complex technical concepts to executives, clients, and diverse technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

15 or more years of experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 12 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, or MD), PhD with 9+ years of experience
Rust knowledge is a plus.

Responsibilities

Define, own, and evolve the end‑to‑end technical vision, architecture, and execution strategy for RAS platforms, ensuring alignment with business objectives while accelerating innovation, scalability, and time‑to‑market.
Architect, design, and implement high‑throughput, low‑latency, highly available (99.999%+) distributed systems supporting real‑time transaction processing, authentication, and identity services at global scale.
Lead the enterprise adoption of Generative AI and Agentic AI to achieve 10X gains in developer productivity, including AI‑assisted coding, testing, observability, security analysis, and autonomous agents for platform operations, as well as AI‑powered, client‑facing product capabilities.
Establish and institutionalize modern software engineering best practices, including CI/CD automation, DevSecOps, Infrastructure‑as‑Code, and policy‑driven governance to improve quality, velocity, and operational resilience across the SSDLC.
Drive cloud‑first, cloud‑native architecture across AWS and/or Azure, optimizing for resiliency, elasticity, performance, cost efficiency, and zero‑trust security using managed services, containers, and serverless technologies.
Actively contribute to critical path initiatives by developing core frameworks, shared services, automation platforms, reference architectures, and proof‑of‑concepts to validate emerging technologies and accelerate product delivery.
Provide technical leadership at scale, setting architectural standards, engineering KPIs, and execution priorities while enabling high‑performing teams to deliver complex, multi‑year platform roadmaps.
Partner cross‑functionally with security, privacy, risk, compliance, governance, and business stakeholders to deliver compliant, secure, and resilient solutions meeting strict non-functional requirements and regulatory expectations.
Translate complex technical strategies into clear, executive‑level narratives, influencing senior leadership, product management, and external partners through data‑driven decision‑making.
Mentor and coach senior engineers, staff engineers, and engineering managers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, innovation, and knowledge sharing through design reviews, tech talks, and one‑on‑one mentorship.
Implement rigorous engineering excellence practices across design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and incident response to uphold platform reliability, security, and architectural integrity.
Exemplify and reinforce Visa’s Leadership Principles by acting as an owner, promoting collaboration, and executing with operational and technical excellence.