Senior Principal: Cloud Data Platform & Real-Time AI

PayPal Inc.; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 198,000 - 294,000; Full time

Job summary

PayPal is seeking a Principal Engineer for Venmo's data platform infrastructure and performance engineering. This hands-on leader defines architectural direction and mentors teams responsible for databases, data pipelines, messaging systems, and caching at massive scale.

The role blends technical depth with executive influence; you will drive AI-first engineering, collaborate across functions, and influence multi-year business strategies while ensuring reliability and latency requirements.

Qualifications

• 10+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree.
• 5+ years building and operating large-scale distributed systems in production cloud environments (AWS preferred).
• Deep, hands-on expertise across data and messaging systems (databases, caching, queues).
• Strong DevOps incl. infrastructure as code and CI/CD for data systems.
• Experience with AI-first development practices and scalable data platforms.

Responsibilities

• Increases results & effectiveness of all software engineers in a large domain.
• Sets the technology roadmap for a domain.
• Adapts role to needs, choosing effective means to reach objectives.
• Mentor others to propagate technical influence and improve performance.
• Provides counsel to senior executives influencing multi-year strategies.
• Identifies cross-project themes and opportunities for improvement.

Skills

Data platforms

Distributed systems

DevOps

AI/ML tooling

Executive communication

Payments domain

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

AWS

CI/CD

Vector databases

Feature stores

LLM serving infra

Job description

PayPal is seeking a Principal Engineer for Venmo's data platform infrastructure and performance engineering. This hands-on leader defines architectural direction and mentors teams responsible for databases, data pipelines, messaging systems, and caching at massive scale.

The role blends technical depth with executive influence; you will drive AI-first engineering, collaborate across functions, and influence multi-year business strategies while ensuring reliability and latency requirements.