Staff Backend Engineer – Payments & Billing

Scribd

74d • $167,000 - $260,500

About The Position

At Scribd, our mission is to spark human curiosity. We create a world of stories and knowledge, democratize the exchange of ideas and information, and empower collective expertise through our products: Everand, Scribd, and Slideshare. We support a culture where our employees can be real and bold, prioritizing customer needs while embracing plot twists. Our flexible work benefit, Scribd Flex, allows employees to choose their daily work-style in partnership with their manager, with occasional in-person attendance required to build collaboration and connection. We hire for 'GRIT', which stands for Goals, Results, Innovation, and Teamwork, and we seek individuals who demonstrate passion and perseverance towards long-term goals. The Payments & Billing team powers our subscription revenue engine, managing billing lifecycles, global payment processing, and financial reliability across our platforms. We focus on payment processing at scale, invoicing, reconciliation, fraud prevention, compliance, and support for international currencies and payment methods.

Requirements

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience, with expertise in building and scaling distributed systems for financial workloads.
• Strong foundation in data modeling, transactional consistency, and high-throughput architectures.
• Hands-on SQL experience (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and familiarity with NoSQL and caching.
• Skilled in observability and reliability practices: defining SLOs, implementing metrics/alerts, debugging distributed systems.
• Strong coding ability in at least one modern backend language such as Ruby, Java, Go, or Python.
• Proven track record of technical leadership: setting architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and driving migrations.
• Clear communication and collaboration skills across product, finance, risk, and platform teams.

Nice To Haves

• Strong coding ability in Ruby.
• Deep experience designing and operating payment or billing systems.
• Experience integrating with major payment service providers (Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, PayPal).
• Knowledge of compliance and security standards (PCI DSS, encryption, tokenization).
• Understanding of fraud prevention strategies (chargebacks, retries, card fingerprinting).
• Experience leading large-scale migrations between payment providers or billing systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical architecture and implementation of Scribd’s payments and billing systems.
• Design, build, and operate backend services that power subscription payments at global scale.
• Own billing lifecycle, global payments, invoicing, reconciliation, and financial reliability.
• Ensure compliance and security of financial systems through PCI DSS, tokenization, encryption, and secure data handling.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence while driving scalable, resilient, and observable financial systems.
• Modernize legacy systems and eliminate technical debt to improve velocity and scalability.
• Partner with Product, Finance, Risk, Platform, and Analytics to deliver secure, reliable financial flows.
• Mentor engineers, shape cross-team technical strategy, and tackle scaling and security challenges.

Benefits

• 100% paid healthcare insurance coverage (Medical/Dental/Vision) for employees.
• 12 weeks paid parental leave.
• Short-term/long-term disability plans.
• 401k/RSP matching.
• Onboarding stipend for home office peripherals.
• Learning & Development allowance and programs.
• Quarterly stipend for Wellness, WiFi, etc.
• Mental Health support & resources.
• Free subscription to Scribd Inc. products.
• Referral Bonuses and Book Benefit.
• Sabbaticals and company-wide events.
• Team engagement budgets.
• Vacation & Personal Days, Paid Holidays (+ winter break), Flexible Sick Time, and Volunteer Day.
• Access to AI Tools for productivity and innovation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees