Sr Staff Software Engineer - Backend (Python)
About The Position
At PayPal, Senior Staff Software Engineers are strategic technical leaders shaping the architecture, scalability, and evolution of systems that power millions of secure global transactions every day. As a Senior Staff Backend Engineer (Python), you’ll define and execute PayPal’s long-term backend architecture strategy, driving innovation, reliability, and performance across platforms. You’ll lead large-scale engineering initiatives, guide digital transformation efforts, and mentor senior engineering talent to raise the technical bar. This hands-on role combines technical excellence with leadership — influencing architecture, optimizing backend systems, and ensuring PayPal continues to deliver trusted, high-quality experiences for customers worldwide.
Requirements
- 8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
Nice To Haves
- 8+ years architecting, building, and operating cloud‑native, distributed systems at meaningful scale.
- Track record of raising the engineering bar through design standards, automated quality gates, SLO ownership, and a culture of blameless post‑mortems.
- You prototype rapidly, run A/B tests, and turn promising spikes into reliable production services.
- Hands‑on experience applying machine‑learning or large‑language‑model techniques for personalization, risk, search, or developer productivity; ready to lead our adoption of AI‑assisted development and LLM‑powered product features.
- Deep understanding of service design, data modeling, asynchronous messaging, and API craftsmanship, with a privacy‑by‑design approach.
- Explain complex trade‑offs in plain language and help seasoned engineers grow through candid feedback and sponsorship.
- Able to align product, design, and compliance partners around a technical vision and rally other teams to deliver on it.
Responsibilities
- Makes technical decisions affecting multiple teams, crossing organizational boundaries
- Establishes conventions & processes to be followed by other employees
- Actions determine the utilization of company resources (people, money, assets) and affect the effectiveness of the company
- Handles multiple, multi-team initiatives simultaneously, using judgement to prioritize among more issues than can be handled individually.
- Understands evolving industry capabilities & practices and can judiciously apply up--to-date information for optimal results
- Competent at communicating technical issues with non-technical audiences
- Spreads their behavior, principles, and knowledge as a means of improving technical results of other employees (via many means – modeling behavior, 1:1s, working sessions, quality documentation)
- Partners with product management, to ideate solutions to business problems & goals
Benefits
- medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance, parental and family leave, 401(k) savings plan, paid time off
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Number of Employees
5,001-10,000 employees
