Sr Staff Software Engineer, BE Python

PayPal•San Jose, CA

6d•$178,500 - $291,500•Hybrid

About The Position

As a leader of the fastest growing segment at Venmo, CFS (Consumer Financial Services), this position will take primary accountability for the domain's backend platform features, capabilities and quality. As a strong partner to the Senior Director, this person makes technical decisions affecting multiple teams, establishes conventions and processes, handles multi-team initiatives, applies industry best practices, communicates technical issues, mentors others, and partners with product management.

Requirements

8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
12+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time spent on backend platforms, authentication, or security-critical systems at scale.
Deep expertise in Python and API management — including protocols like OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, FIDO2/WebAuthn — and a strong intuition for where they're applied correctly versus where they're abused.
Proven track record of defining and shipping large-scale distributed systems, with experience leading technical strategy across multiple teams or organizations.
Hands-on comfort with backend systems at scale (Python, Java, Go, or similar) and Cloud (AWS), along with the security engineering fundamentals to reason carefully about threat models, data handling, and attack surfaces.
Experience working with or designing systems that meet regulatory requirements — KYC, AML, GDPR, or similar — and translating compliance constraints into implementable engineering decisions.
Strong communication skills. You can write a crisp design doc, hold your own in an executive review, and explain a hard technical tradeoff to a non-technical stakeholder without losing precision.
Expert with distributed services and backend systems
Experience in managing infrastructure as code using Terraform

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s and/or Master's in computer science, or a related field of study, or equivalent experience
Experience building services on public cloud – preferably AWS

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
Set the technical direction for Venmo's CFS platform, including authentication, authorization, CFS verification, and fraud risk systems.
Own the most complex, cross-cutting problems and drive them to resolution — from initial design through production.
Partner with PayPal's platform and security teams to align on shared Venmo standards, reusable infrastructure, and cross-org initiatives, acting as a bridge between Venmo's product needs and PayPal's enterprise capabilities.
Lead architectural reviews and define engineering standards for how the CFS team builds, scales, and secures its systems.
Raise the bar on design quality, reliability, and security posture across the org.
Mentor and develop senior engineers. You don't manage people, but you shape how the team thinks — through design docs, code reviews, technical debates, and examples.
Collaborate with Product, Legal, Compliance, and Security to translate regulatory and risk requirements (KYC, AML, GDPR, PCI) into sound technical solutions that don't sacrifice developer experience or system performance.
Identify and proactively address risks — whether that's a fragile authentication flow, a compliance gap, or a scaling bottleneck — before they become incidents.
Own the performance and availability of the services, as well as participate in on-call rotations and provide support during incidents.
Have an appetite for learning and contributing to complex projects alongside your colleagues.