Staff Software Engineer - Payments

Quizlet•San Francisco, CA

13d•Onsite

About The Position

At Quizlet, our mission is to help every learner achieve their outcomes in the most effective and delightful way. Our $1B+ learning platform serves tens of millions of students every month, including two-thirds of U.S. high schoolers and half of U.S. college students, powering over 2 billion learning interactions monthly. We blend cognitive science with machine learning to personalize and enhance the learning experience for students, professionals, and lifelong learners alike. We’re energized by the potential to power more learners through multiple approaches and various tools. Let’s Build the Future of Learning Join us to design and deliver AI-powered learning tools that scale across the world and unlock human potential. About the Team: Quizlet’s Payments team plays a critical role in ensuring seamless financial transactions, subscription lifecycles, and payment flows for our users globally. With millions of users interacting with our platform, we focus on building reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure that supports our high volume of payments and subscription services. This is a high-impact area, with a lot of opportunities to innovate, optimize, and expand the scope of payments at Quizlet. We are at the intersection of engineering, business, and compliance, which means you’ll have the chance to shape the future of payments and drive key business outcomes. About the Role: As a Staff Software Engineer on the Payments team, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and executing the technical vision for Quizlet’s payments infrastructure. This role offers a unique opportunity to drive innovation across both backend systems and user-facing payment flows. You will be instrumental in defining the overall payments strategy, working closely with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment with business goals. With significant opportunities for growth and innovation in the payments space, your contributions will have a direct impact on the expansion of Quizlet’s subscription business. While primarily focused on backend development, you will also contribute to building and optimizing user-facing features related to payment flows and subscription management, ensuring seamless, intuitive, and performant experiences. You will lead technical projects, mentor engineers, and ensure that our services are reliable, scalable, and performant. We’re happy to share that this is an onsite position in our San Francisco office. To help foster team collaboration, we require that employees be in the office at a minimum of three days a week : Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and as needed by your manager or the company. We believe that this working environment facilitates increased work efficiency, team partnership, and supports growth as an employee and organization.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in backend development with a strong emphasis on building large-scale distributed systems
Familiarity with modern front-end technologies (e.g., React, NextJS) and the ability to build and maintain user-facing components, though deep UI expertise is not required
Experience with modern backend frameworks (e.g., Go, Node.js , Python) and relational databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL)
Expertise in building and scaling APIs, especially in the payments and subscription space
Strong system architecture and design skills with a focus on scalability, reliability, and performance optimization
Proven ability to lead technical projects from inception to completion and mentor other engineers
Strong interest in solving complex engineering problems, with a focus on payments, financial systems, and transactional workflows

Nice To Haves

Experience in working with global payment providers and handling multi-currency, multi-jurisdictional payments
Experience in both backend and frontend development, with a particular emphasis on seamless integration between the two
Familiarity with tax engines, financial reconciliation processes, or billing systems
Strong DevOps skills, including experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) and containerization tools like Kubernetes
Experience working in a subscription-based or SaaS company
Passion for learning and growing in the fintech/payments space

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain large-scale backend services that handle payments and subscriptions for millions of users
Play an active role in defining Quizlet’s overall payments strategy, driving innovation and ensuring scalability
Develop user-facing components and UI features that provide intuitive payment and subscription experiences, using modern front-end technologies such as React
Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product managers, UX/UI designers, and frontend engineers, to ensure a seamless user experience in all payment flows
Build reusable UI components and abstractions to improve development speed and consistency in payment-related user interfaces
Ensure the system's reliability and uptime through robust architecture, system design, and incident response
Provide mentorship to junior and mid-level engineers and contribute to the technical growth of the team
Implement monitoring and alerting solutions to ensure operational excellence and resiliency
Stay ahead of industry trends in payments technology and incorporate new solutions to improve efficiency and reduce costs

Benefits

Total compensation for this role is market competitive, including a starting base salary of $196,320 - $268,100, depending on location and experience, as well as company stock options
Collaborate with your manager and team to create a healthy work-life balance
20 vacation days that we expect you to take!
Competitive health, dental, and vision insurance (100% employee and 75% dependent PPO, Dental, VSP Choice)
Employer-sponsored 401k plan with company match
Access to LinkedIn Learning and other resources to support professional growth
Paid Family Leave, FSA, HSA, Commuter benefits, Wellness benefits
40 hours of annual paid time off to participate in volunteer programs of your choice

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