Staff SW Engineer - Performance Engineering

Visa•Austin, TX

3d•$133,300 - $213,400•Hybrid

About The Position

Visa's Value Added Services Risk and Security Product Development group builds payment solutions that combine global payment processing, fraud management, payment security, and reporting systems. The Staff SW Engineer will design, develop, and improve services for customers in an agile environment, contributing code and collaborating with technical and business stakeholders to deliver secure, high-quality products. The role focuses on application and infrastructure performance for highly scalable, low-latency, highly available, high-throughput payment processing systems. The engineer will plan and execute performance testing, establish performance baselines and go-live certification criteria, ensure software is instrumented for monitoring and troubleshooting, analyze code and recommend optimizations, and support Visa's 24x7 systems. The work also includes reliability engineering, automation for monitoring and incident response, investigations of complex technical issues, and contributions to cloud-native evolution and globally distributed payment systems. The position follows a hybrid work model. Visa requires at least three days in the office, with the specific schedule confirmed by the hiring manager. Hours vary based on department needs, and travel is required 5–10% of the time.

Requirements

At least 5 years of relevant work experience with a bachelor's degree; or at least 2 years with an advanced degree; or 0 years with a PhD; or at least 8 years of relevant work experience.
Proficiency in at least one programming language such as Java, C++, or Python; coding knowledge in Java or Python and scripting languages is required by the posting.
Expertise with performance testing tools such as LoadRunner and JMeter.
Experience with APM or observability solutions such as AppDynamics, Dynatrace, OPNET, Prometheus, or Grafana.
Hands-on experience with Unix/Linux environments, operating-system internals, file systems, disk and storage, and networking protocols.
Working knowledge of virtual machines and containers.
Experience handling multiple tasks and stakeholders.
Ability to communicate effectively and document performance-testing work.

Nice To Haves

Six or more years of work experience with a bachelor's degree, or four or more years with an advanced degree, or up to three years with a PhD.
Experience in distributed enterprise application development using the Java technology stack.
Server-side development experience.
Understanding of RDBMS platforms such as Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL, or Postgres.
Understanding of CI/CD and exposure to Jenkins, Maven, or GitHub Actions.
Ability to design components independently and experience with highly scalable web services.
Exposure to containerized microservices architecture and stacks.
Experience with troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and implementing major components for large projects.
Knowledge of Splunk, thread and heap dump analysis, garbage collection, Grafana, and system or application monitoring and analysis tools.
Understanding of algorithms and data structures.
Experience working in Agile and Scrum.
Excellent communication skills.
Knowledge of GenAI, ChatGPT, or LLMs.
Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, AI/ML deployment pipelines, observability, automation, and distributed payment systems.

Responsibilities

Create application and infrastructure performance plans and models for scalable, low-latency, highly available, high-throughput payment processing systems.
Work with architects and developers to ensure software components have appropriate metrics instrumentation for real-time and remote troubleshooting and performance monitoring.
Evaluate, develop, and execute load-testing tools and tests to stress critical payment applications.
Performance-test APIs, abstractions, and integration patterns for distributed computing systems.
Define performance strategies and report performance baselines required to certify go-lives.
Document performance-test procedures and scripts.
Review code and recommend optimization techniques.
Support Visa's 24x7 systems and resolve issues within established SLAs, including fixing bugs and enhancements.
Design and implement reliable application services with always-on availability.
Automate monitoring, deployment, and incident-response processes.
Investigate complex technical issues and help prevent recurrence.
Contribute to the evolution from traditional applications to cloud-native solutions.
Collaborate with engineers, clients, and partners globally to build, support, and deploy application services.
Contribute product code and coordinate continuous integration, test automation frameworks, and related activities.
Communicate project status, issues, and risks clearly and promptly.
Identify product innovation opportunities and improve practices, standards, and processes.