Job Summary:
This job acts as a project leader, coordinating the activities of other engineers, determining technical tasks, and improving existing structures and processes. It involves making technical decisions, collaborating with management to set standards, and representing the company to external partners.

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.

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

At Venmo, we are creating a product that redefines how people think about payments. We strive to deliver an outstanding user experience while empowering people to connect seamlessly with each other and the world. We are looking for highly passionate and intellectually curious individuals who want to innovate, solve complex problems, and inspire a team to achieve groundbreaking results. At this level, you will be instrumental in shaping the technical vision, strategy, and operational effectiveness of our infrastructure and cloud services.

Job Description:

Our team is committed to the smooth and reliable operation of Venmo's infrastructure and applications, encompassing operations, automation, security, compliance, and release engineering. While our focus is mainly on Cloud Engineering, elements of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps principles are integral to our scope. As a Sr. Staff Software Engineer, you will set the strategic direction and lead our most technical initiatives. You will drive technical excellence across the team and act as the top-level mentor for all engineers within Venmo's Cloud Engineering and DevOps group.

You will be expected not just to lead initiatives but also to shape Venmo's next-generation infrastructure while maintaining hands-on technical involvement. You will work closely with product and engineering leadership to define and execute strategies that ensure scalability, long-term reliability, and unparalleled efficiency for our cloud solutions. You will be part of Venmo's technical architect group, responsible for charting and delivering major advancements in our systems design and application development practices.

Our technical stack: AWS, EKS, Docker, GitHub Enterprise, CDK, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Datadog, Bash, Python, Go

Key Responsibilities:

• Contribute, refine, and drive the strategic direction of multiple technical domains, leading the highest-impact initiatives critical to Venmo's infrastructure roadmap.

• Act as the key visionary and hands-on contributor to ensure the team's delivery and scalability goals align with engineering excellence standards.

• Teach by example-mentoring senior and junior engineers-and act as a technical authority for critical decisions across our systems.

• Enable cross-team collaboration to achieve seamless delivery of cloud-native applications powered by AWS services, Kubernetes (EKS), and container-based solutions.

• Provide expert-level guidance on optimizing infrastructure for high growth and robust reliability while also handling cost efficiency.

• Evangelize and implement Cloud Engineering DevOps practices, ensuring CI/CD pipelines, microservice testing frameworks, and secret management systems operate securely and efficiently.

• Advance the team's capabilities in Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), enabling automation, secure releases, and vulnerability prevention.

• Partner with engineering and product teams, supporting strategic delivery plans while implementing scalable and sustainable solutions.

• Drive efforts to recognize and adopt emerging technologies and architectures that unlock technical potential and align with Venmo's long-term objectives.

What You'll Do:

• Collaborate with leadership and peers to define exciting, high-impact engineering initiatives that align with Venmo's vision and roadmap.

• Define designs and strategies, identify stakeholders, mitigate risks, communicate changes, and implement solutions at scale.

• Troubleshoot complex incidents, uncover patterns and root causes, and design preventive tools and processes.

• Coach engineers across multiple teams, instilling principles of scalable system design, optimization, and continuous improvement.

• Develop tools, frameworks, and automation that push Venmo's infrastructure to set benchmarks for speed, efficiency, and reliability.

• Conduct reviews and audits to ensure quality systems delivery while maintaining a culture of continuous feedback and accountability.

• Lead efforts to integrate modern cloud technologies-accelerating Venmo's position as an industry leader in payments infrastructure.

What We're Looking For:

• 10+ years of hands-on experience in Cloud Engineering, DevOps, software development or a related field.

• 7+ years operating distributed applications at scale (24x7x365) within Cloud Engineering, DevOps, or SRE frameworks.

• 3+ years of technical leadership experience, with a proven track record of leading teams through high-impact technical initiatives.

• Deep expertise with designing, implementing, optimizing, and supporting complex, large-scale infrastructure systems.

• Extensive, hands-on experience with IaaS and PaaS offerings (AWS or similar cloud providers).

• Advanced proficiency in programming/scripting languages like Python, Java, Bash, and Go.

• In-depth experience with containers (Docker) and orchestration tools (Kubernetes/EKS).

• Demonstrated ability to mentor, coach, and elevate engineers' technical and operational capabilities.

• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to explain highly technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.

• Recognized as a thought leader, with contributions to engineering teams that shape culture, drive innovation, and deliver measurable results.

• Experience with synthetic testing and vulnerability scanning to ensure secure systems delivery.

What You'll Bring:

• Expertise in balancing technical excellence with business objectives to deliver tangible results.

• A mindset focused on driving reliability, scalability, and optimization across both new and existing systems.

• A passion for mentoring engineers and fostering a culture of learning, sharing, and innovation.

• A track record of delivering impactful solutions while pushing boundaries and solving complex problems.

By joining Venmo as a Sr. Staff Software Engineer, you'll play an instrumental role in shaping the future of payments infrastructure. Every day, you'll advance our capacity to deliver delightful, scalable, and secure user experiences to millions of people globally. Your contributions will amplify Venmo's capabilities and empower the development teams to thrive while building the systems that users love.

Subsidiary:
Venmo

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:
San Jose, California | ($196,500.00 - $291,500.00 Annually)

Additional Location(s) | Pay Range:
Chicago, Illinois | ($178,500.00 - $265,100.00 Annually)
Austin, Texas | ($178,500.00 - $265,100.00 Annually)
Scottsdale, Arizona | ($169,500.00 - $251,900.00 Annually)

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. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately. 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.