Principal Engineer, Cloud Data Infrastructure
About The Position
The Principal Engineer is the technical authority for Venmo’s data platform infrastructure and performance engineering. The role sets technology vision and architectural direction, and provides deep technical leadership for teams responsible for mission-critical databases, data pipelines, messaging systems, caching infrastructure, and performance engineering that power Venmo’s real-time payment processing at massive scale. It is a hands-on individual contributor role with broad organizational influence, requiring close involvement with code and systems, ownership of technical strategy, development of AI-first engineering practices, and mentorship of the Venmo data platform engineering community. The position also serves as the primary technical voice in cross-functional and executive-level discussions. The role increases the results and effectiveness of software engineers across a large domain, sets the domain technology roadmap, and adapts its approach to achieve technical goals. It provides counsel to senior PayPal executives and influences multi-year business strategies; exercises broad latitude in setting objectives; resolves ambiguous situations; uses discovery and exploratory research to inform decisions; identifies cross-team opportunities for improvement; and determines when to adopt industry-standard solutions versus develop novel ones. The Principal Engineer mentors others to extend technical influence and improve organizational performance. The position is with PayPal subsidiary Venmo. For most employees, PayPal’s balanced hybrid model provides three days in the office and two days at the employee’s choice of the PayPal office or home workspace. Travel is listed as 0 percent.
Requirements
- At least 10 years of relevant experience and a bachelor’s degree, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Expected qualifications specify 15 or more years of professional experience in software engineering or data platform roles, with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- At least 5 years building and operating large-scale distributed systems in production cloud environments; AWS is preferred.
- Deep, hands-on expertise across data and messaging systems, including relational and NoSQL databases, distributed caching, and message queue architectures, with ability to work with system internals.
- Strong DevOps engineering background, including infrastructure as code, CI/CD for data systems, and automation-first operational practices.
- Demonstrated experience with AI-first development practices and applying AI tooling to accelerate engineering productivity.
- Track record delivering performance improvements and scalability enhancements for consumer-facing applications serving tens of millions of users.
- Established record of technical influence across large engineering organizations without direct management authority.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including presenting complex technical trade-offs to executive stakeholders.
Nice To Haves
- Background in financial technology, payments processing, or regulated industries.
- Experience supporting transaction processing systems requiring extreme reliability and millisecond-level response times.
- Familiarity with resilience engineering, failure injection testing, and business continuity planning.
- Knowledge of modern data pipeline frameworks and real-time analytics architectures.
- History of mentoring and growing senior- or staff-level engineers into technical leadership roles.
- Experience integrating AI/ML workflows into data platform infrastructure, including vector databases, feature stores, or LLM serving infrastructure.
Responsibilities
- Increase the results and effectiveness of software engineers across a large domain.
- Set the technology roadmap and architectural direction for the domain.
- Provide deep technical leadership for mission-critical databases, data pipelines, messaging systems, caching infrastructure, and performance engineering.
- Own technical strategy while remaining hands-on with code and systems.
- Pioneer AI-first engineering practices and apply AI tooling to accelerate engineering productivity.
- Provide advice and counsel to senior executives and influence multi-year business strategies.
- Serve as the primary technical voice in cross-functional and executive-level conversations.
- Resolve ambiguous and unfamiliar situations with creative, decisive solutions informed by discovery and exploratory research.
- Identify themes and trends across projects and teams and pursue broadly impactful improvements.
- Evaluate whether to adopt industry-standard solutions or develop novel solutions.
- Mentor engineers and grow technical influence and organizational performance.
Benefits
- Generous paid time off.
- Healthcare coverage for employees and their families.
- Resources to support financial security and mental health.
- Potential annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
