Senior Staff Engineer, Big Data Infrastructure

Stripe, Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 271,000 - 407,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus / commissions

401(k) plan

Medical, dental, and vision benefits

Wellness stipend

Job summary

Stripe, Inc. in New York seeks a Senior Staff leader for the Big Data Infrastructure organization.

You will guide a 40+ engineering team to scale foundational data systems and partner with Data Foundations, Payins Engineering, and AI/ML Foundations to modernize data platforms and enable scalable pipelines. You’ll drive modernization bets, migrate from YARN to Kubernetes, advance vectorization and Airflow, and build a multi-region, multi-cloud data strategy for high availability.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related field.
• 12+ years of professional software development experience.
• Strong background in distributed infrastructure or platform services.
• Experience leading cross-team projects with minimal downtime.
• Experience building reliable, secure distributed systems.
• Experience driving a culture of operational excellence with metrics and dashboards.

Responsibilities

• Guide a 40+ person engineering team to scale foundational data systems.
• Partner with Data Foundations, Payins Engineering, and AI/ML Foundations to modernize tech stack.
• Drive modernization bets including YARN to Kubernetes migrations, native vectorization, Airflow and Data Catalog modernization.
• Lead multi-region and multi-cloud data strategy for high availability and disaster recovery.
• Reduce KTLO by shifting fixes into the platform.
• Mentor engineers up to Staff+.

Skills

Distributed infrastructure

Platform services

Leadership

Metrics dashboards

Operational excellence

Cross-team collaboration

Education

BS/MS in Computer Science

Tools

Airflow

Spark

Kubernetes

Iceberg

S3

Azure Blob Storage

Job description

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About The Team

In this role, you’d be joining the Big Data Infrastructure team. Our team builds and maintains the platforms that power data work across Stripe, managing three core layers:

• Data Orchestration (Airflow)
• Batch Compute (Spark, Celeborn)
• Data Lake (Iceberg, Hive, S3, Azure Blob Storage)

We support over 2,000 engineers and 600+ internal teams, processing workloads that organically grow more than 30% year over year. Our infrastructure handles massive scale, managing over 800 PB of data, running 325,000 applications a day, and accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual spend, directly powering critical pipelines like inbound payments, network reconciliation, and capital underwriting.

What you’ll do

As the technical leader for the Big Data Infrastructure organization, you will guide a 40+ person engineering team to scale our foundational data systems. You will partner closely with major internal customers like Data Foundations, Payins Engineering, and AI/ML Foundations to modernize our tech stack and execute Stripe's transition to the "Agentic Era" - building "invisible infrastructure" where AI agents operate data pipelines end-to-end.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical leader for the Big Data Infrastructure organization, overseeing distributed systems that manage 20% of Stripe's total AWS spend
• Execute Stripe's transition to the "Agentic Era" by building invisible infrastructure that empowers AI agents to author, validate, ship, and operate data pipelines
• Drive the architecture and delivery of critical modernization bets, including YARN to Kubernetes migrations, native vectorization (Gluten/Velox), and Airflow and Data Catalog modernization
• Lead the implementation of a multi-region and multi-cloud data strategy for high availability, disaster recovery, and Azure Blob Storage compliance
• Reduce operational burden and maintenance overhead (KTLO) from over 40% to under 10% by shifting fixes into the platform instead of relying on runbooks
• Foster a culture of operational excellence and mentor engineers at various stages in their careers, up to Staff+

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

• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related field
• This is a Senior Staff role, so ideally 12+ years of professional experience in a software development role
• A strong engineering background in distributed infrastructure and/or platform services, including one or more of the following: storage, databases, or compute
• Experience leading projects on a cross-team and company-wide scale, including scaling and migrating systems with little to no downtime
• Experience developing, maintaining, and debugging distributed systems while optimizing their reliability and security
• Experience driving a culture of operational excellence, with a deep understanding of metrics, alerts, and dashboards

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience driving AI-led architectural transformations and integrating agentic workflows into large-scale data systems
• Experience in a development team at AWS, Azure, OCI, or Google
• Experience with big data infrastructure at scale, such as Spark, Iceberg, S3, Airflow, YARN, and Celeborn
• Experience with database internals and/or with Kubernetes

In-office expectations

Office-assigned Stripes in most of our locations are currently expected to spend at least 50% of the time in a given month in their local office or with users. This expectation may vary depending on role, team and location. For example, Stripes in Stripe Delivery Center roles in Mexico City, Mexico, Bengaluru, India, and Dublin, Ireland work 100% from the office. Also, some teams have greater in-office attendance requirements, to appropriately support our users and workflows, which the hiring manager will discuss. This approach helps strike a balance between bringing people together for in-person collaboration and learning from each other, while supporting flexibility when possible.

Pay and benefits

The annual US base salary range for this role is $271,200 - $406,800. For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role. This salary range may be inclusive of several career levels at Stripe and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location. Applicants interested in this role and who are not located in the US may request the annual salary range for their location during the interview process.

Additional benefits for this role may include: equity, company bonus or sales commissions/bonuses; 401(k) plan; medical, dental, and vision benefits; and wellness stipends.

We look forward to hearing from you.

At Stripe, we welcome diverse perspectives and people who think rigorously and aren't afraid to challenge assumptions. Join us.

At Stripe, we're looking for people with passion, grit, and integrity. You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. Your skills and passion will stand out—and set you apart—especially if your career has taken some extraordinary twists and turns. At Stripe, we welcome diverse perspectives and people who think rigorously and aren't afraid to challenge assumptions. Join us.