Staff Software Engineer, Backend

PayPal•San Jose, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are looking for a talented and motivated Staff Software Engineer with strong Java expertise to join our engineering team. In this role, you will design, build, and maintain high-performance, scalable backend systems that power PayPal's global payments platform. You will work closely with product managers, architects, and cross-functional engineering teams to deliver robust solutions.

Requirements

5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
5+ years of professional software development experience.
Strong proficiency in Java (8, 11, or 17+) and object-oriented design principles.
Experience building RESTful APIs and microservices using Spring / Spring Boot.
Solid understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, and system design.
Hands-on experience with relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases (Cassandra, Redis).
Experience with messaging systems such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience in the fintech, payments, or financial services domain.
Knowledge of OAuth2, OpenID Connect, or similar security frameworks.
Familiarity with observability tools such as Splunk, Dynatrace, or Grafana.
Experience with Agile/Scrum development methodologies.
Contributions to open-source projects or demonstrated technical thought leadership.

Responsibilities

Acts as a project or system leader, coordinating the activities of other engineers on the project or within the system
Determines the technical tasks that other engineers will follow
Actions result in the achievement of customer, operational, program or service objectives
Proactively improves existing structures & processes
Exercises judgement in reconciling diverse and competing priorities (time, quality, complexity risk) to identify optimal solutions to problems
Notices patterns and condenses repetition into densely meaningful generalized solutions
Collaborates with management to set/improve standards for engineering rigor
Trusted to represent PayPal, Inc to the outside world via interactions with partners, customers, or industry organizations
Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain production-grade Java backend services and APIs at scale.
Build and optimize microservices using Java (8/11/17+), Spring Boot, and RESTful API frameworks.
Collaborate with senior engineers and architects to define technical standards, patterns, and best practices.
Participate in code reviews, technical design discussions, and architecture planning sessions.
Troubleshoot and resolve production issues, ensuring high availability and reliability of payment systems.
Write comprehensive unit, integration, and performance tests to maintain code quality.
Contribute to CI/CD pipeline improvements and DevOps practices.
Mentor junior engineers and contribute to team knowledge-sharing initiatives.
Work with stakeholders across Product, Data Engineering, and Platform teams to deliver end-to-end features.