Staff Engineer, Billing

Stripe; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Retirement plans

Equity options

Job summary

Stripe is seeking a Staff Engineer in Seattle to lead the technical direction of its extensibility platform. This role involves defining the architecture, collaborating with teams, and innovating solutions for complex billing challenges.

The ideal candidate should have over 12 years of software engineering experience and a strong ability to communicate across teams. You will have the autonomy to shape a new product area with significant impact on Stripe's mission.

Qualifications

• Experience with distributed systems and service-oriented architecture.
• Proven track record in leading complex software projects.
• Ability to build alignment across teams without authority.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical architecture for the extensibility platform.
• Mentor engineers and improve technical standards.
• Drive adoption of Billing's extension capabilities.

Skills

Software engineering expertise

Technical leadership

Communication skills

Distributed systems knowledge

Education

12+ years of software engineering experience

Job description

About the team

In this role, you'll be joining a small, focused team with a large mandate: enabling businesses and Stripes to extend Stripe Billing exactly to their needs. Our users accomplish the vast majority of their goals with what Stripe Billing provides out of the box, but when they need to tailor billing logic to their unique business model, this team provides the tools and capabilities to do it.

We are in the early stages of building an extensibility platform for Stripe Billing and are working toward general availability. Our work unlocks enterprise customers with complex, bespoke billing requirements — directly contributing to Stripe's mission of increasing the GDP of the internet.

• Our team brings extensibility to Stripe's Billing products, enabling merchants to customize billing logic — from discount calculations to invoicing workflows — through user-authored scripts and orchestration of Billing primitives
• We collaborate closely with Billing domain teams and Stripe's Extensibility platform teams to identify and build high-leverage extension points across the billing engine
• We have shipped at Stripe Sessions two years in a row — most recently launching five new extension capabilities along with script upload and observability tooling; you can explore our public docs at docs.stripe.com/extensibility

What you'll do

As a Staff Engineer on the team, you'll own the technical direction of our extensibility platform and play a central role in how we grow from early adoption to general availability. You'll work closely with other Billing domain teams to identify where extensibility creates the most value, partnering with them to build those capabilities into their products as first‑class features — not afterthoughts.

This is a high‑autonomy, high‑ownership role on a team that is actively shaping a new product area at Stripe. You'll navigate novel engineering challenges — including how to safely execute user‑authored logic inside Stripe's billing engine — and establish the technical patterns the rest of the team builds on. You'll also be a key voice in cross‑functional conversations with Billing leadership and Extensibility platform teams as we scale adoption from early customers to a broadly available product.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical architecture of Billing’s extensibility platform, setting patterns and standards that scale across teams
• Identify high‑leverage extension points across Stripe's billing system and partner with Billing domain teams to build them into their products as extensible, first‑class features
• Own end‑to‑end technical solutioning for complex, novel problems — from initial design through production delivery — in an evolving product environment
• Build resilient systems that handle failures gracefully, including novel failure modes introduced by user‑authored logic running inside Stripe's billing engine
• Drive adoption of Billing's extension capabilities by external customers and internal Billing teams, iterating based on real‑world usage
• Collaborate with Billing leadership, product managers, and Extensibility platform teams to define and execute the team's technical roadmap
• Mentor engineers on the team and raise the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, and hands‑on collaboration

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

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with a demonstrated track record of leading large, complex software projects that span multiple teams and organizations
• Experience as a technical lead on a team building external‑facing products for customers
• Deep software architecture knowledge, including distributed systems, service‑oriented architecture, and resilient system design
• Demonstrated ability to build alignment and drive large initiatives forward across organizational boundaries — without direct authority
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including producing clear technical documentation for both technical and non‑technical audiences

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in fintech, payments, or billing systems
• Platform engineering experience — building tools, abstractions, or frameworks for use by internal engineering teams
• Background in domain‑driven design or building extensible systems (e.g., plugin architectures, programmable platforms, or scriptable workflows)
• Experience iterating on an early‑stage product from initial adoption through growth, including hardening a system for production at scale

Pay and Benefits

The range listed on this page is the role’s annual base salary range. This range may vary depending on the candidate’s location. 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. Specific benefits and details about what compensation is included in the salary range listed on this page will vary depending on the applicant’s location and can be discussed in more detail during the interview process. Benefits/additional compensation for this role may include: equity, company bonus or sales commissions/bonuses; retirement plans; health benefits; and wellness stipends.