Staff Software Engineer

PayPal•Austin, TX

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Company PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers. We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards. Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross-border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross-border trade. Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day. We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities. Job Summary: We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as the Senior Tech Lead across multiple scrum teams within our Merchant Integrations group. You’ll be at the technical helm of some of our most critical initiatives—building secure, scalable systems that power integrations used by merchants around the globe. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role for someone ready to shape architecture, influence best practices, and lead others across a modern tech stack. Job Description: Essential 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 Meet our team: You’ll join the Merchant Integrations organization, made up of 4 teams and ~50 engineers, focused on edge networking, SDKs, and seamless merchant onboarding. You’ll report to a Group Engineering Manager and work alongside engineers across dev-ops, backend, frontend, and mobile. You’ll also partner with identity, infrastructure, and product teams to drive platform-wide outcomes. Your way to impact: You will be Improve and enhance an API that funnels funds like very few API’s in the world do. It is a great responsibility and opportunity to own such a vital infrastructure. Improving the latency (for example) by a ~10ms can cause a major change in the bottom line, the impact is unmatched. Your day to day: Lead architecture and technical decisions across teams Serve as a point of contact for system design and cross-team collaboration Design and build distributed systems using AWS, Java, GraphQL, Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, and more Participate in on-call rotations, ensuring reliability and incident response Develop and execute short- and long-term API strategy that aligns with Product goals, ensuring the best experience for our merchants. Oversee the development and optimization of API endpoints, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align API design and implementation with rapidly changing business objectives. Conduct code reviews to maintain high-quality standards and ensure adherence to best practices in various languages and platforms

Requirements

5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
8+ years of software engineering experience
Proven leadership across multiple teams or large-scale systems
Deep experience with cloud-native architecture (preferably AWS)
Excellent leadership, verbal and written communication skills.
Deep GraphQL API backend experience and developing complex mutations.
Proficient in at least two of: Java, TypeScript, Ruby on Rails
Solid understanding of distributed systems and cloud architectures.
Ability to present technical problems to non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

Experience working with payment systems, identity platforms, or edge networking is a plus
Comfortable navigating ambiguity, influencing cross-functional teams, and driving decisions across orgs

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
Lead architecture and technical decisions across teams
Serve as a point of contact for system design and cross-team collaboration
Design and build distributed systems using AWS, Java, GraphQL, Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, and more
Participate in on-call rotations, ensuring reliability and incident response
Develop and execute short- and long-term API strategy that aligns with Product goals, ensuring the best experience for our merchants.
Oversee the development and optimization of API endpoints, ensuring scalability, reliability, and performance.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align API design and implementation with rapidly changing business objectives.
Conduct code reviews to maintain high-quality standards and ensure adherence to best practices in various languages and platforms