Stripe

Staff Engineer, Identity

Stripe • $130K — $180K *
Seattle, WA 98115In-Person
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
3 weeks ago
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years in a strategic leadership role.
  • Proven track record in API design, abstractions, and building developer products.
  • Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences.
  • Demonstrated experience in leading teams and delivering growth-oriented solutions.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a growth mindset.
  • Proficiency in a variety of programming languages and frameworks.
  • Experience fostering a psychologically safe, collaborative environment.

Responsibilities

  • Define the technical architecture for core Identity systems, making informed build-partner-buy decisions.
  • Architect new systems including Identity Store and advanced fraud detection pipelines while evolving product architecture.
  • Lead cross-functional alignment as the technical voice in collaboration with product, legal, and engineering teams.
  • Establish engineering standards and mentor senior engineers to raise the skill level in high-stakes product operations.
  • Ensure system reliability, security, and scalability while implementing proactive observability measures.

Benefits

  • Opportunities for professional growth in a dynamic environment.
  • Autonomy and responsibility in leadership and technical decision-making.
  • Collaborative work culture with a diverse team focused on psychological safety.
  • Access to cutting-edge technologies and challenging projects designed to drive innovation.
Full Job Description
Responsibilities
  • Own technical strategy - Define the architecture for Identity's core systems (Identity Store, headless verification platform, fraud detection infrastructure), make build-vs-buy-vs-partner decisions, and surface technical risks before they become customer-facing failures
  • Lead 0-1 platform development - Architect net-new systems including the Identity Store, Networked Identity platform, and advanced fraud detection pipeline (behavioral biometrics, deepfake discriminators, adversarial training). Drive the evolution from a hosted-UI product to a headless-API and embedded-components platform
  • Drive cross-functional alignment - Be the primary technical voice in roadmap and resourcing discussions. Partner with ML, product, legal, and engineering leads across Risk, Fraud, Link, Connect, and Crypto to ensure Identity's abstractions serve the full breadth of Stripe's product surface
  • Raise the technical bar - Set engineering standards across ML, backend, mobile, and front-end; lead design reviews; and mentor senior engineers on the judgment needed to operate a high-stakes, externally-facing product
  • Operate with ownership - Be accountable for reliability, scalability, and security of the systems you design - including the observability and alerting that catch model drift and fraud pattern shifts before customers do
Who you are

We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.
Minimum requirements
  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years of experience in a strategic technical leadership role.
  • Experience leading engineering team(s) working on API design, abstractions, frameworks, or client libraries (e.g. building internal or external developer products).
  • Proven track record of delivering pragmatic solutions that accelerate business growth
  • Ability to adjust conversations from high-level discussions to detailed coding
  • Thrives on a high level of autonomy and responsibility
  • Clear and persuasive writing and in-person communication
  • Strong problem-solving skills, critical thinking, determination, and a growth mindset
  • Ability to work effectively with a diverse group of people, genuinely caring for each other and contributing to high level of psychological safety for all team members and partner
  • Has experience in a range of software languages and frameworks. Examples of what we work with include:
    • Languages: primarily Ruby and Typescript, but also Python, Scala, Java, Go, and SQL (Spark and Trino dialects)
    • Frameworks: React, GraphQL Kafka, Protobuf, Airflow, Bazel, Temporal,
    • Others: Mongo, Splunk, Prometheus
Preferred qualifications
  • Experience with identity verification, fraud detection, or trust and safety systems - especially systems with adversarial inputs at scale
  • Familiarity with ML systems in production: model serving, training pipelines, observability, drift detection, and the feedback loops that keep models accurate under adversarial conditions
  • Experience building platform products with multiple consumer types - internal platform teams and external developers - where API backward compatibility and abstraction quality are first-class concerns
  • Prior experience with 0-1 product builds: you've started with a blank page and ended with a production system, and you have clear opinions about what makes that process go well or poorly
  • Exposure to the technical stack we work with: primarily Ruby and TypeScript on the backend and web, Python for ML and data pipelines, with infrastructure spanning Kafka, Temporal, Protobuf, React, and distributed data stores
  • Experience navigating ambiguity in a fast-moving organization - you can make confident technical decisions with incomplete information and update gracefully when new constraints emerge

About Stripe

Stripe is a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. Businesses of every size—from new startups to public companies—use our software to accept payments and manage their businesses online. Stripe helps new companies get started and grow their revenues, and established businesses accelerate into new markets and launch new business models. Stripe powers businesses all over the world, from the new startup that just launched yesterday to the Fortune 500 companies that we all know and love. Stripe is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Dublin, London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, and more.
Learn more about Stripe
Size
4,000 employees
Industry
Finance & Insurance
Founded
2010
* Ladders Estimates

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