Director, Data Platforms & Performance Engineering - Venmo

PayPal•San Jose, CA

About The Position

Directs and controls the delivery of business and technical outcomes that comprise multiple projects and operational activities within a domain through organizational and technical leadership Defines engineering health objectives that drive organization health, engineering best practices and operational targets Drives product and technical strategy with cross-functional leaders across the enterprise to deliver Domain goals Responsible for the delivery of programs, establishing annual organizational goals and ensuring performance and results that impact both their domain and potentially enterprise Develops engineering strategy that translates into operational and tactical plans; uses ground-breaking methods to think beyond existing solutions Sets the tri-annual roadmap for a domain level organization. Defines the operational strategy for a domain based on a defined budget Evaluates key business challenges and can complete complex, ambiguous initiatives having impact across engineering; directs the development of new or innovative solutions. Ability to deal with high levels of technical domain level ambiguity. Collaborates with direct team, managers in org, stakeholders, managers in other orgs, external partners and business stakeholders Set strategic direction and provide executive leadership for data infrastructure and performance engineering organizations supporting Venmo's transactional systems processing billions of payments annually. Drive multi-year technical roadmaps aligned with business objectives and lead organizational transformation initiatives. Define and communicate a multi-year vision and strategy for Venmo's data platform infrastructure and performance engineering capabilities. Lead organizational design and structure decisions to optimize for scale, efficiency, and business impact Set strategic direction for cloud-based data infrastructure on AWS, establishing architectural standards and best practices across Aurora MySQL, DocumentDB, DyanamoDB, Cassandra, Redis, and associated proxy technologies Define architectural vision and standards for messaging platforms (Kafka) and streaming data pipelines that deliver analytics insights to business stakeholders Establish organization-wide performance strategy and lead initiatives to eliminate bottlenecks across Venmo, ensuring systems can scale for 10X growth Oversee chaos engineering programs and enterprise-wide capacity planning processes to validate infrastructure readiness for major events including holidays, promotional campaigns, and high-transaction volume periods Drive technical debt reduction and platform modernization initiatives with measurable business outcomes Collaborate with product management, security, compliance, and business operations teams to ensure technical solutions meet both functional requirements and regulatory obligations Develop engineering talent through mentorship, coaching, and creating opportunities for technical growth and leadership development Own budget planning, financial forecasting, and resource management to deliver maximum value within allocated investments Establish operational excellence practices including monitoring, alerting, incident response, and post-incident analysis to continuously improve system reliability and achieve 99.999%+ uptime targets

Requirements

10+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
2 years of experience leading others
Minimum of 15+ years of professional experience in software engineering or data platform roles, with a bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
5+ years' experience building and running in production distributed large-scale systems in cloud. (AWS Preferred)
8+ years leading engineering teams focused on data platforms, distributed systems, or infrastructure
3+ years' experience managing engineering managers and leading organizations of 20+ engineers.
Technical depth in multiple database paradigms (relational, NoSQL), distributed caching, and message queue architectures
Proven track record delivering performance improvements and scalability enhancements for consumer-facing applications serving millions of users
Experience navigating organizational transformation and managing teams through periods of rapid growth
Background in financial technology, payments processing, or regulated industries
History of supporting transaction processing systems requiring extreme reliability and millisecond-level response times
Familiarity with resilience engineering practices, failure injection testing, and business continuity planning
Knowledge of modern data pipeline frameworks and real-time analytics architectures
Ability to build alignment across engineering, product, and business stakeholders on technical priorities and trade-offs
Commitment to building diverse, inclusive teams and fostering psychological safety
Strong communication skills for conveying complex technical concepts to varied audiences including executives

Responsibilities

Directs and controls the delivery of business and technical outcomes that comprise multiple projects and operational activities within a domain through organizational and technical leadership
Defines engineering health objectives that drive organization health, engineering best practices and operational targets
Drives product and technical strategy with cross-functional leaders across the enterprise to deliver Domain goals
Responsible for the delivery of programs, establishing annual organizational goals and ensuring performance and results that impact both their domain and potentially enterprise
Develops engineering strategy that translates into operational and tactical plans; uses ground-breaking methods to think beyond existing solutions
Sets the tri-annual roadmap for a domain level organization.
Defines the operational strategy for a domain based on a defined budget
Evaluates key business challenges and can complete complex, ambiguous initiatives having impact across engineering; directs the development of new or innovative solutions.
Ability to deal with high levels of technical domain level ambiguity.
Collaborates with direct team, managers in org, stakeholders, managers in other orgs, external partners and business stakeholders
Set strategic direction and provide executive leadership for data infrastructure and performance engineering organizations supporting Venmo's transactional systems processing billions of payments annually.
Drive multi-year technical roadmaps aligned with business objectives and lead organizational transformation initiatives.
Define and communicate a multi-year vision and strategy for Venmo's data platform infrastructure and performance engineering capabilities.
Lead organizational design and structure decisions to optimize for scale, efficiency, and business impact
Set strategic direction for cloud-based data infrastructure on AWS, establishing architectural standards and best practices across Aurora MySQL, DocumentDB, DyanamoDB, Cassandra, Redis, and associated proxy technologies
Define architectural vision and standards for messaging platforms (Kafka) and streaming data pipelines that deliver analytics insights to business stakeholders
Establish organization-wide performance strategy and lead initiatives to eliminate bottlenecks across Venmo, ensuring systems can scale for 10X growth
Oversee chaos engineering programs and enterprise-wide capacity planning processes to validate infrastructure readiness for major events including holidays, promotional campaigns, and high-transaction volume periods
Drive technical debt reduction and platform modernization initiatives with measurable business outcomes
Collaborate with product management, security, compliance, and business operations teams to ensure technical solutions meet both functional requirements and regulatory obligations
Develop engineering talent through mentorship, coaching, and creating opportunities for technical growth and leadership development
Own budget planning, financial forecasting, and resource management to deliver maximum value within allocated investments
Establish operational excellence practices including monitoring, alerting, incident response, and post-incident analysis to continuously improve system reliability and achieve 99.999%+ uptime targets