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:

As a Staff Engineer on PayPal’s Identity Customer Platform, you will lead a team of engineers from a technical perspective, guiding architecture, design, and implementation of complex functionalities for globally distributed, highly resilient systems that serve millions of customers. You will collaborate closely with Senior Staff Engineers, Principal Engineers, and cross-functional partners to ensure alignment with platform strategy and drive technical excellence across the team. This role plays a critical part in shaping the evolution of identity services, customer data management, and platform infrastructure. A key initiative is the development of a cloud-native Customer Data Store—a unified system that consolidates customer data across domains to enhance data accuracy, improve customer interactions, and support compliance and privacy requirements. You will help translate strategic direction into scalable, high-impact solutions that meet business and operational goals.

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

Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum of 8 years of relevant work experience and a Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

Your Day-to-Day

• Lead and collaborate with software engineers and cross-functional partners to design, build, and support real-time, scalable systems across the Identity platform.
• Develop and maintain cloud-native applications and services that power critical identity and customer data experiences.
• Leverage modern technologies while continuously learning and adopting new tools, frameworks, and patterns.
• Identify opportunities for platform improvements, technical debt reduction, and knowledge sharing across teams.
• Design and evolve APIs and service contracts with a deep understanding of their usage, performance, and integration across systems.
• Troubleshoot complex issues across distributed systems, including services outside your immediate ownership.
• Drive technical discussions on system architecture, design patterns, and long-term platform evolution.
• Contribute to all phases of the software development lifecycle, including architecture, development, testing, deployment, and operations.

What You Need to Bring

• 10+ years of backend software development experience with a strong foundation in Java and modern cloud-native architectures.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (e.g., GCP, AWS, or Azure) and container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes).
• Proficiency in multiple programming languages (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Go, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript).
• Experience with Reactive programming (e.g., Reactor, RxJava, or Spring WebFlux).
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, observability tools, and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across complex, interconnected systems.
• Quality-first mindset with experience in automated testing, test-driven development, and performance tuning.

Preferred Qualifications

• Full-stack development experience (e.g., React, Node.js) is a plus.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Proven success working in large-scale engineering environments and leading cross-team initiatives

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

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 benefits to help you thrive in every stage of life. We champion your financial, physical, and mental health by offering valuable benefits and resources to help you care for the whole you.

We have great benefits including a flexible work environment, employee shares options, health and life insurance and more. To learn more about our benefits please visit https://www.paypalbenefits.com.

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 paypalglobaltalentacquisition@paypal.com.

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.