Staff Software Engineer

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

Expected Qualifications:

• 5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

• 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 

  What do you need to bring: 

  • 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. 

  • 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 

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

-

The base pay for this role will depend on where you work and the relevant experience and expertise you bring. The expected range of pay for this role by location is:

Primary Location | Pay Range:

Austin, Texas | ($160,500.00 - $238,700.00 Annually)

Additional Location(s) | Pay Range:

No other locations are assigned to this requisition currently.

Additional compensation for this role may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us.

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our 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.

Who We Are:

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion 

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.  In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.  If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at [email protected].

Belonging at PayPal: 

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.