Staff Software Engineer- Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps

PayPal•San Jose, CA

3d•$152,500 - $262,350•Hybrid

About The Position

This job acts as a project leader, coordinating the activities of other engineers, determining technical tasks, and improving existing structures and processes. It involves making technical decisions, collaborating with management to set standards, and representing the company to external partners. The role is within the Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps team at Venmo, focusing on ensuring the seamless operation of user-facing services, production, and development systems. The team manages Venmo’s infrastructure comprehensively, including operations, automation, security, compliance, and release engineering, integrating elements of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps. This includes overseeing CI/CD infrastructure, developing secure pipelines, implementing secret management systems, creating development environments, and establishing microservices scaffolding and testing frameworks. The quality of systems is paramount, requiring automatic delivery, thorough testing, and vulnerability scanning. As a Staff Engineer, you will support critical domains, lead major initiatives, and be part of the architect group defining the future of the company’s technical development. You will be a hands-on contributor, mentoring other engineers and product owners on best practices. The role offers a high degree of independence in decision-making, with accountability for results. The technical stack includes AWS, EKS, Docker, GitHub Enterprise, CDK, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Datadog, Bash, Python, and Go.

Requirements

5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
Bachelors and/or master's in computer science or related field of study
7+ years' experience in software development or a related field
5+ years' experience operating distributed applications 24x7x365, as part of a Cloud Engineering, DevOps, and/or SRE team.
2+ years technical leadership experience
Extensive hands-on experience with designing, implementing and supporting infrastructure (AWS experience preferred) to support global-scale services
Deep hands-on experience with IaaS and PaaS solutions from AWS (or similar cloud provider):
Hands-on programming and scripting (Python, Java, Bash, Go)
Hands-on experience with containers & container orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes
Strong communication skills with the ability to understand and explain technical issues to a non-technical audience

Nice To Haves

CDK
Terraform
GitHub Actions
Datadog
Bash
Python
Go

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
Contribute and help drive the strategic direction to one or more of our domains, leading initiatives in your area of expertise.
Act as a hands-on contributor, while leading by example
Mentor senior and junior engineers
Enjoy a high degree of independence in decision-making while being accountable for results of yourself and your team
Be part of a team dedicated to driving the scalability and reliability of Venmo’s AWS cloud infrastructure
Provide guidance, thought leadership, and mentorship to application teams to build and strengthen their cloud competencies
Lead major initiatives end-to-end: define the design, identify stakeholders, navigate risks and changes, coordinate colleagues' work, implement solutions, and be accountable for timely and quality project delivery.
Continually raise the bar through assisting fellow engineers in developing and delivering their code more efficiently and securely.
Troubleshoot incidents, identify root causes, fix and document problems, and implement preventive measures.
Coach and mentor engineers on design principles and best practices.
Recognize, validate and evangelize emerging technologies and architectures that align with business objectives.
Strategically and tactically leading by example, making meaningful contributions to the improvement of engineering teams’ production operations.
Develop and improve tools and automation to manage infrastructure and application configuration as code.
Enhance the quality, reliability, and stability of our infrastructure and operations.