Staff Backend Python Engineer - Identity & Security

BAM Ventures; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 177,000 - 262,000; Full time

Job summary

PayPal is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Venmo Identity Engineering team. You will architect and deliver high‑performance, fault‑tolerant identity solutions that enhance trust and security for millions of global transactions.

The role focuses on leading design, guiding engineers, and shaping the technical roadmap, using Python (Django/Flask), cloud platforms, and modern backend patterns to ensure reliability, scalability, and maintainability across PayPal's payments ecosystem.

Qualifications

• 5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Lead the design and architecture of scalable, cloud-native backend systems leveraging microservices and serverless frameworks.
• Define and drive the technical roadmap, ensuring engineering initiatives align with strategic business goals.
• Act as a project or system leader, coordinating the activities of other engineers and setting clear technical direction.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship, fostering a culture of innovation, quality, and continuous improvement.
• Architect and develop large-scale backend systems using Python (Django or Flask) with a focus on performance, reliability, and maintainability.
• Establish and uphold engineering standards, promoting code quality, design excellence, and operational rigor.
• Design and implement fault‑tolerant, high‑availability systems with strong disaster recovery capabilities.
• Apply advanced security practices, including secure coding, encryption, and access control, to ensure compliance and data protection.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams (Product, Infrastructure, Operations) to deliver impactful business outcomes.
• Continuously improve existing technical frameworks, development processes, and system performance.
• Exercise sound judgment in balancing time, quality, complexity, and risk to deliver optimal solutions.
• Represent PayPal externally in interactions with partners, customers, and industry organizations to promote technical excellence.

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

Skills

Python

Backend design

Cloud-native

Microservices

Serverless

Security practices

AWS/GCP/Azure

Terraform/CDK

Redis

Event-driven architecture

Open-source contributions

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Terraform

CDK

SQS

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Pulsar

Redis

Job description

PayPal is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Venmo Identity Engineering team. You will architect and deliver high‑performance, fault‑tolerant identity solutions that enhance trust and security for millions of global transactions.

The role focuses on leading design, guiding engineers, and shaping the technical roadmap, using Python (Django/Flask), cloud platforms, and modern backend patterns to ensure reliability, scalability, and maintainability across PayPal's payments ecosystem.