Job Summary:
Location: Remote North Calorina, remote Miami, Remote Florida
Division: Ticketmaster, Payments
Line manager: VP Marketplace Engineering
Contract terms: Permanent, full time
THE TEAMWe're seeking an experienced C++ engineer to join our Platform Payments team, working on Ticketmaster's mission-critical payment processing systems. These systems process millions of transactions monthly across multiple payment methods and 20+ gateway providers, powering real-time payments for culture-defining live events at massive global scale.
THE JOBYou'll work across a mature C/C++ codebase spanning three decades - from pre-standard patterns in our core authorization gateway to C++17 in our Bazel monorepo. The immediate work is maintenance and strategic modernization of these systems, but this role is explicitly designed to grow: from legacy renovation into systems design, gRPC service architecture, and new technology adoption including Rust. If you're energized by the challenge of understanding why a system was built the way it was before deciding what it should become, this is the role.
This is not a maintenance job with a maintenance ceiling. You'll work on systems that power how fans pay for live events worldwide - at a scale where a misconfiguration can cause thousands of payment failures during a major onsale. The intellectual challenge is real: strategic modernization of systems spanning three decades of C++, with a clear trajectory into new technology.
There is tremendous green-field work ahead: decomposing legacy IPC into gRPC services, strengthening real-time fraud defenses during peak onsales, optimizing seamless global checkout, integrating new payment methods, and expanding embedded finance that shapes not just ticket purchases but the full in-venue experience. A strong engineer in this role will meaningfully shape the direction of these critical systems.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING - Maintain and strategically modernize high-throughput payment processing systems handling real financial transactions in real time
- Drive platform migration work, including migrating a core Windows C++ authorization gateway to Linux via Clang and Bazel
- Develop robust payment integrations with third-party gateways (Chase Paymentech, Barclays, HSBC, AMEX, Adyen, Braintree, Klarna, Shift4, and others)
- Decompose legacy IPC frameworks into gRPC services, enabling payment components to be reused across the broader payments ecosystem - this is the bridge from maintenance into systems design
- Implement security-critical features involving encryption, PCI compliance, and sensitive payment data handling
- Optimize performance of transaction processing pipelines where latency directly affects whether a customer completes a purchase
- Incrementally steer legacy codebases toward modern C++ practices (RAII, ownership semantics, safe string handling) without breaking the payment flows that depend on them
- Design and implement comprehensive testing including unit tests, integration tests, and fuzz testing for security-critical components
- Debug and resolve production issues in systems with complex interdependencies and real operational takes
- Collaborate with payment operations teams to onboard new payment methods and gateway providers
- Ensure compliance with PCI-DSS and other financial industry standards
- Participate in on-call rotation for production payment system support
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (or TECHNICAL SKILLS)- 7+ years of professional C++ development experience in production environments
- Modern C++ fluency
- Strong understanding of systems programming, including memory management, concurrency, and performance optimization
- Ability to reason about undefined behavior, and its practical consequences across platforms
- Systematic debugging methodology
- Toolchain understanding and cross-compilation concerns
- Proficiency with build systems - Bazel experience highly valued;
- Experience working with legacy codebases older than 10 years - ability to understand, respect, and incrementally modernize existing systems
- Experience with or strong interest in payment processing or financial transaction systems
- Deep knowledge of security best practices
- Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, Codex) with mature judgment - uses AI as an accelerator that requires human verification, especially in codebases with undefined behavior where AI-generated code can appear correct and still be wrong
- Understanding of HTTP/HTTPS protocols and RESTful API design
- Experience with Linux/Unix environments
- Rust experience or genuine interest in learning it
- gRPC experience or familiarity with service decomposition from monolithic architectures
- Payment gateway integration experience (Chase Paymentech, Braintree, Adyen, or similar)
- PCI-DSS compliance knowledge and implementation experience
- Experience with platform migrations (e.g., Windows to Linux, MSVC to Clang)
- Bazel build system expertise
- Performance profiling experience
- Experience with shared memory, IPC frameworks, or low-level concurrency primitives
- Kafka or other event streaming platforms experience
- OpenSSL/cryptographic libraries hands-on experience
- Familiarity with AI-powered code review and static analysis tools
- Awareness of security considerations when using AI tools with legacy or under-documented systems
YOU (BEHAVIOURAL SKILLS) - Approaches legacy systems with respect and curiosity, recognizing the constraints and decisions that shaped them
- Takes time to understand existing systems before proposing improvements or modernization
- Continuously improves code and systems incrementally while maintaining stability
- Balances modernization efforts with the realities of production environments that require high reliability
- Demonstrates a strong security-first mindset, especially in systems handling sensitive transactions
- Understands the critical nature of payment processing and the need for accuracy, resilience, and uptime
- Navigates complex systems with care, ensuring minimal disruption while driving improvements
- Shows enthusiasm for evolving legacy systems into modern, scalable solution
- Systems thinker who can reason across layers - from compiler optimization to cache behavior to network latency to business impact
- Strategic modernizer who understands incremental improvement over wholesale rewrite and can articulate when to pay down technical debt versus when to live with it
- Security-conscious developer who treats buffer safety, memory safety, and integer correctness as default concerns, not afterthoughts
- Pragmatic problem solver who can work within the constraints of legacy systems while steadily steering them forward
- Growth-oriented engineer who starts in maintenance but is motivated to grow into systems design, gRPC service architecture, and broader payments ecosystem work
- Collaborative communicator who explains reasoning clearly, asks good clarifying questions, and engages as a peer - can disagree constructively and change their mind when presented with new information
- Detail-oriented professional who understands the operational stakes of financial transaction processing
- Systems thinker able to reason across layers-from low-level performance (compiler optimization, cache behavior, network latency) to overall business impact
- Strategic modernizer who prioritizes incremental improvements and can balance technical debt decisions pragmatically
- Security-conscious developer who treats memory safety, buffer handling, and data integrity as foundational principles
- Pragmatic problem solver who works effectively within legacy system constraints while steadily driving improvements
- Growth-oriented engineer motivated to evolve from maintenance work into system design, service architecture, and broader ecosystem ownership
- Collaborative communicator who articulates reasoning clearly, asks thoughtful questions, and engages constructively with peers
- Open-minded professional who can challenge ideas respectfully and adapt perspective based on new information
- Detail-oriented with a strong understanding of the operational and financial impact of transaction processing systems
BENEFITS & PERKS Through our 'Taking Care of Our Own' program, we provide benefits across six key pillars:
- HEALTH: Medical, vision, dental and mental health benefits for you and your family, with access to a health care concierge, and Flexible or Health Savings Accounts (FSA or HSA)
- YOURSELF: Free concert tickets, generous paid time off including paid holidays, sick time, and personal days
- WEALTH: 401(k) program with company match, stock reimbursement program
- FAMILY: New parent programs including caregiver leave, plus fertility, adoption, foster, or surrogacy support
- CAREER: Career and skill development programs with School of Live, tuition reimbursement, and student loan repayment
- OTHERS: Volunteer time off, crowdfunding match
