Staff Software Engineer | Credit Cards

United States Digital Space LLC; Toronto; On-site; CAD 192,000 - 288,000; Full time

Job summary

Nu is seeking a Staff Engineer to join the Credit Card platform as a technical anchor, ensuring scalability and growth as we expand into new markets. You will mentor engineers, shape long-term architecture, and collaborate with Product and Management to deliver high-impact solutions.

This hybrid role involves working with teams across Brazil, the U.S. and Canada, including Toronto, with a focus on regulatory compliance, data residency, and secure, scalable systems for millions of customers

Qualifications

• Extensive history architecting and scaling mission-critical, low-latency systems.
• Hands-on experience across multiple programming paradigms; functional programming exposure.
• Ability to define and lead long-term technical strategy for cross-country platform ecosystems.
• Experience navigating regulated financial environments and data residency requirements.
• Led large-scale platform transformations with risk management and reliability focus.
• Deep knowledge of credit card/payment systems design.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term vision and architecture for the core credit card platform across markets.
• Collaborate with Product, Management, and exec leadership to shape technical roadmap and OKRs.
• Mentor Architects and Senior Engineers; promote engineering excellence and accountability.
• Address high-risk technical challenges and multi-system, multi-country reliability improvements.
• Oversee complex system transformations (monolith to microservices, migrations) with regulatory compliance.

Skills

Staff Engineer level experience

Functional programming

Long-term architecture strategy

Regulated financial environments

Platform transformations

Credit card / payments knowledge

Job description

About Nu

Nu is the leading digital bank in Latin America, serving 135 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. The company has been leading an industry transformation by leveraging data and proprietary technology to develop innovative products and services.

Guided by its mission to fight complexity and empower people, Nu caters to customers’ complete financial journey, promoting financial access and advancement with responsible lending and transparency. The company is powered by an efficient and scalable business model that combines low cost to serve with growing returns.

Nu’s impact has been recognized in multiple awards, including Time 100 Most Influential Companies, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, and Forbes World’s Best Banks.

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About the Role

At the company, our Credit Card platform is the core of our global expansion. We are looking for a Staff Engineer to join our platform team as a technical anchor, ensuring our systems remain scalable and flexible as we maintain sustainable growth and innovation in the countries where we currently operate, while also launching into new international markets. You will play a vital role in evolving the architecture of one of our most complex and strategic products.

You will operate within a high-impact triad alongside Product and Management, focusing on long-term technical strategy and system health. As a hands-on technical leader, you will challenge the status quo, propose innovation and solve deep architectural problems, mentor and become a technical reference for our engineering team. Your work will directly enable millions of customers to access financial products via credit card worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term vision and strategy for the global architecture of the core credit card platform, ensuring exponential scalability and continuous evolution capability.
• Lead the strategic partnership with Product and Business leadership (C-level and VPs) to shape the medium and long-term technical roadmap and define the strategic OKRs and global impact KPIs.
• Act as a technical and cultural reference, defining the highest standards of engineering excellence, mentoring other Architects and Principal/Staff Engineers, and fostering a culture of innovation and accountability.
• Lead and resolve the most ambitious and high-risk technical challenges, intervening in critical performance or resilience bottlenecks and driving technical execution for solutions with multi-system and multi-country impact.
• Design and oversee the execution of complex system transformations (e.g., core banking migrations, replacement of legacy platforms) ensuring regulatory compliance in multiple jurisdictions and fiscal regimes, proactively mitigating risks.
• Communicate and defend the technical strategy eloquently and convincingly to the executive board and non-technical audiences, translating architecture decisions into business value and competitive advantage.

Required Qualifications

• Principal/Staff Engineer level experience or equivalent with an extensive and demonstrable history in architecting and scaling mission-critical, high-volume, and low-latency systems in global fintech or e-commerce environments.
• Expert proficiency (demonstrated in code and design) in multiple programming paradigms, with significant hands-on experience in functional programming (e.g., Clojure, Scala, Haskell) and reactive/event-based architectures.
• Proven ability to establish and lead the long-term technical strategy for entire platform ecosystems (not just isolated components), influencing the direction of multiple engineering groups.
• Deep and successful experience in navigating and defining the architecture in highly regulated financial environments (e.g., BACEN, FCA, SOX) and designing systems to meet data residency requirements and complex cross-border transactions.
• History of successfully leading and completing large-scale platform transformations (e.g., transition from monoliths to microservices mesh, migration of data centers or clouds), managing risks and operational impact.
• In-depth knowledge of credit card/payment systems design is a significant differential.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Clojure or similar functional languages.
• Proven interest or experience in leveraging AI to optimize engineering workflows.
• Deep domain knowledge of credit card processing or financial ledgers.

Location & Work Model

This role is based on a hybrid model at one of our the company offices in Brazil (São Paulo, Campinas, Rio de Janeiro, or Belo Horizonte), the United States (Palo Alto or Miami), or Canada (Toronto).

Location-Specific Disclosures

Total compensation includes base salary, RSUs and benefits.

Toronto base salary range (CAD): $192.000 - $288.000

Palo Alto base salary range (USD): $230.400 - $288.000

Diversity & Inclusion / Equal Opportunity

At the company, we believe that diversity is essential to building the best products and services. We are committed to creating a welcoming work environment that respects and values diversity in all its forms, and we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

If you need accommodations during the application or interview process, please let us know.

This offer is conditional on meeting all applicable regulatory eligibility requirements and successful completion of background checks.

Our recruitment process may involve the use of artificial intelligence–enabled tools, such as automated interview transcription and analysis, to support the evaluation process. Artificial intelligence is not used to make final hiring decisions; all decisions are made by human reviewers.