Staff Software Engineer

PayPal • San Jose, CA

23d • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Staff Engineer on the PayPal Graph Platform, you will take technical ownership of the Node.js subgraph framework and its supporting modules and tooling. You’ll lead a multi‑phase modernization effort, automate SDLC workflows, and drive improvements in performance and observability across the ecosystem. This is a hands‑on technical leadership role that combines deep engineering with platform thinking—setting direction, building frameworks, guiding adoption, and raising the bar for reliability and developer velocity. You’ll partner closely with engineering teams across PayPal to define strong defaults, make upgrades safe and repeatable, and establish an opinionated path for building and operating high‑quality subgraphs at scale. You will contribute to architectural decision-making, uphold engineering best practices, identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, and advocate for user-centered design principles.

Requirements

• 5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in Node.js and TypeScript.
• Demonstrated experience building frameworks, libraries, or platform tooling used by multiple teams.
• Strong knowledge of GraphQL (schema design, subgraph/federation concepts) and service integration.
• Expertise in CI/CD (ideally Harness or similar), automated testing, and release orchestration.
• Proven track record in observability (metrics/tracing/logging), performance tuning, and SLO‑driven reliability.
• Understanding of AI tools (Eg. Claude, ChatGPT, etc.)

Nice To Haves

• Platform or framework ownership experience at scale (versioning, semver, deprecation and migration strategies).
• Tooling for developer experience: CLIs, scaffolding/templates, codemods (e.g., jscodeshift/TS transforms).
• Monorepo/package management experience (e.g., Nx, Turborepo, workspaces).
• Familiarity with runtime/edge performance, caching, and resilience patterns (circuit breakers, backpressure).
• Background in building internal developer platforms or operating production GraphQL services.

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
• Modernize the Node.js Subgraph Framework
• Redesign framework architecture to align with current Graph platform practices and platform standards.
• Upgrade core platform dependencies and establish secure, reliable, and performant defaults.
• Define clear contracts, extension points, and compatibility guarantees for adopters.
• Automate the SDLC Workflow
• Build opinionated scaffolding and CLI tooling to streamline new service creation.
• Standardize CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Harness) with automated tests, checks, and gated releases.
• Introduce versioned, reusable modules to enable safe, incremental upgrades without re‑scaffolding.
• Improve Performance & Observability
• Establish baseline metrics, tracing, and logging; define SLIs/SLOs and error budget practices.
• Drive latency and throughput improvements; identify and resolve performance bottlenecks.
• Provide dashboards, alerts, and runbooks that simplify operations for product teams.
• Raise Platform Quality & Adoption
• Author reference implementations, migration guides, and deprecation policies.
• Lead cross‑team architectural reviews and alignments; champion secure software development.
• Mentor engineers and influence engineering best practices across the subgraph ecosystem.

Benefits

• At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most. We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees