Sr Staff Software Engineer

Engg; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

PayPal's Venmo identity infrastructure team seeks a Sr. Staff Software Engineer to own high-stakes identity systems at scale. You will drive authentication, authorization, identity verification, and fraud risk initiatives, collaborating with platform and security groups to align on standards and reusable infrastructure.

Lead architectural reviews, set engineering standards, and mentor senior engineers. Expect on-call involvement and a strong emphasis on reliability, security, and

Qualifications

• 8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR any equivalent combination of education and experience.

Responsibilities

• Make technical decisions affecting multiple teams, across org boundaries.
• Set the technical direction for Venmo's identity platform (auth, authorization, verification, fraud risk).
• Mentor and develop senior engineers; define engineering standards and review architectures.

Skills

Leadership

Cross-team collaboration

Communication

Mentorship

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Equivalent experience

Job description

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

Venmo's identity infrastructure is foundational — it underpins trust, safety, and compliance for every transaction on the platform. This is a rare opportunity to own a high-stakes technical domain at scale, with the backing of PayPal's resources and the speed of a product people love. As a Sr. Staff Software Engineer, you will be a subject matter expert. We are looking for technologists with the highest levels of technical talent, programming, and communication skills with a keen desire to deeply understand our product and how to make our systems more robust and more resilient.

Job Description

Essential Responsibilities

• Makes technical decisions affecting multiple teams, crossing organizational boundaries
• Establishes conventions & processes to be followed by other employees
• Actions determine the utilization of company resources (people, money, assets) and affect the effectiveness of the company
• Handles multiple, multi-team initiatives simultaneously, using judgement to prioritize among more issues than can be handled individually
• Understands evolving industry capabilities & practices and can judiciously apply up--to-date information for optimal results
• Competent at communicating technical issues with non-technical audiences
• Spreads their behavior, principles, and knowledge as a means of improving technical results of other employees (via many means – modeling behavior, 1:1s, working sessions, quality documentation)
• Partners with product management, to ideate solutions to business problems & goals

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications

• In your day-to-day role, you will: Set the technical direction for Venmo's identity platform, including authentication, authorization, identity verification, and fraud risk systems. You'll own the most complex, cross-cutting problems and drive them to resolution — from initial design through production. Partner with PayPal's platform and security teams to align on shared identity standards, reusable infrastructure, and cross-org initiatives, acting as a bridge between Venmo's product needs and PayPal's enterprise capabilities. Lead architectural reviews and define engineering standards for how the Identity team builds, scales, and secures its systems. You'll raise the bar on design quality, reliability, and security posture across the org. Mentor and develop senior engineers. You don't manage people, but you shape how the team thinks — through design docs, code reviews, technical debates, and examples. Collaborate with Product, Legal, Compliance, and Security to translate regulatory and risk requirements (KYC, AML, GDPR, PCI) into sound technical solutions that don't sacrifice developer experience or system performance. Identify and proactively address risks — whether that's a fragile authentication flow, a compliance gap, or a scaling bottleneck — before they become incidents. Own the performance and availability of the services, as well as participate in on-call rotations and provide support during incidents. Have an appetite for learning and contributing to complex projects alongside your colleagues.
• Preferred Qualifications Bachelor’s and/or Master’s in computer science, or a related field of study, or equivalent experience 12+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time spent on identity, authentication, or security-critical systems at scale. Deep expertise in identity and access management — including protocols like OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, FIDO2/WebAuthn — and a strong intuition for where they're applied correctly versus where they're abused. Proven track record of defining and shipping large-scal