Senior Staff Software Engineer

Nubank•Palo Alto, CA

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

Nu is hiring Senior Staff Software Engineers to serve as technical references for areas of the business. The role focuses on identifying important problems, designing and delivering solutions, and raising engineering standards across teams. Nu operates a growing platform that includes thousands of microservices, low-latency payment rails, large-scale data platforms, machine learning in critical paths, and a mobile app spanning multiple financial products and regulated markets. The company is expanding into new countries, businesses, and interfaces, including AI agents acting on customers’ behalf. Engineers will be matched to a team based on their depth and interests. Current areas include agentic and AI-native banking, payments and money movement, fraud, identity and risk, core banking, and platform and infrastructure. The position is expected to help the organization succeed by providing technical leadership beyond an individual team.

Requirements

Extensive experience at Staff level or above, or equivalent, designing, building, and operating high-scale, mission-critical systems.
A track record of leading initiatives across organizational boundaries with little formal authority and successfully delivering them.
Evidence of shipping software, including continuing to write code and validate architecture in production.
Strong judgment in ambiguous situations.
A history of building systems from scratch and evolving large systems inherited from others.
Ability to explain complex technical strategy clearly to engineers, product partners, and senior leadership, and build alignment around it.
A pragmatic, hands-on approach to AI, including using it to increase productivity and measuring its actual impact.
Professional fluency in English.

Nice To Haves

Experience in payments, card networks, fraud and risk, or digital banking.
Experience building consumer-facing products at scale, with product and user-experience sensibility.
Experience in regulated or otherwise unforgiving environments where correctness matters more than speed.
Experience with LLMs, agent platforms, or protocols such as MCP.
Portuguese or Spanish language skills.
Clojure or functional programming experience; Clojure is Nu’s primary backend language, and engineers receive immersive Clojure onboarding.

Responsibilities

Lead complex, ambiguous, strategic initiatives end to end, from setting technical direction through to code running in production.
Identify important problems and deliver scalable solutions that influence business results and strategy.
Shape mid- to long-term area strategy with product and business leaders and translate it into a technical roadmap.
Make high-stakes architecture decisions where there is no clear precedent and guide teams through trade-offs.
Establish standards beyond the immediate team, including design guidelines, quality bars, and reusable components adopted by other squads.
Mentor senior engineers, managers, and peers across teams.
Participate in hiring and lead or sponsor guilds.
Represent Nu in technical discussions with external partners, platforms, and vendors.
Write code and validate architecture in production.