Staff Engineer - Payments (Mobile & Terminal Experiences)

United States Digital Space LLC; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 235,000 - 317,000; Full time

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC is seeking a Staff Engineer - Payments to lead the evolution of our payment platform across mobile apps, SDKs, terminals, and backend services. You will architect unified shopper journeys, drive technical strategy, and partner with product, design, legal, and external providers to deliver secure, scalable experiences.

This hands-on leadership role demands deep mobile architecture knowledge, strong ownership, and the ability to mentor engineers while aligning

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering in modern production environments.
• Mobile development experience with Android (Kotlin) or iOS (Swift) and production ownership.
• Cross-train across mobile platforms and work across boundaries.
• Collaborative leadership: influence across stakeholders and time zones.
• Deep understanding of mobile architecture, SDK design, concurrency, and distributed systems.
• Platform thinking to generalize complex processes into flexible services.
• Strong ownership with a proactive, problem-solving mindset.

Responsibilities

• Build and shape next-gen payment experiences across mobile apps, SDKs, terminals, and backend systems.
• Define long-term technical strategy for payment experiences and cross-functional alignment.
• Lead resolution of reliability, performance, security, and compatibility issues at scale.
• Mentor engineers across levels and drive architectural governance.

Skills

Senior software engineering

Mobile development (Android/Kotlin ORi

Job description

This is the company

the company provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At the company, everything we do is engineered for ambition.

For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.

Staff Engineer - Payments

As a Staff Engineer in the Payments organization, you will act as a trusted advisor and shape the future of how businesses and shoppers interact with the company's payment platform. Operating at the intersection of mobile technology, point-of-sale systems, and backend services, you will drive the technical direction for our Terminal and Mobile experiences.

This is a highly hands-on technical leadership role. You will architect unified shopper journeys, solve complex challenges across the payments ecosystem, and multiply the impact of the teams around you. By driving technical decisions through ambiguity and establishing foundational architecture, you will lead the evolution of the company's next generation of payment experiences.

What you'll do

• Build the next generation of payment experiences: Help the company evolve beyond traditional terminal and mobile boundaries toward seamless shopper and merchant experiences across devices, applications, and payment surfaces.

• Architect & Innovate: Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for complex payment experiences spanning mobile apps, SDKs, payment terminals, and distributed backend systems.

• Solve Complex Problems: Lead the resolution of challenging technical issues involving reliability, performance, security, payment flows, and device compatibility at a global scale.

• Drive Strategic Alignment: Act as a strategic partner to Product, Design, Legal, and other stakeholders. Translate ambiguous business goals into executable plans, balance short-term delivery with long-term investments, and confidently push back using data and prototypes (POCs) to drive consensus.

• Lead Across Boundaries: Establish clear architectural boundaries, APIs, and integration patterns that enable cross-functional teams to move independently.

• Develop Technical Talent: Mentor engineers across levels. Tailor your coaching to help Senior Engineers tackle complex problems independently, while demystifying internal systems and explaining the "why" behind decisions for Junior Engineers.

• Champion Engineering Excellence: Raise the bar for observability, testing, and operational excellence. Work internally and with external technology partners (e.g., OS providers, hardware vendors) to ensure robust, secure integrations.

Who you are

• Experience: 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience in modern production environments, with a proven track record operating at a Staff-level scope.

• Mobile Expertise: 5+ years of direct, hands-on mobile development experience with proven proficiency in either Android (Kotlin) OR iOS (Swift). You have shipped and owned production mobile code, not just directed it.

• Cross-Platform Mindset: A strong willingness and demonstrated ability to cross-train onto the mobile platform you don't currently specialize in. You must be comfortable working across platform boundaries.

• Collaborative Leadership: A proactive relationship-builder who can set technical direction and influence without formal authority, manage diverse stakeholders across time zones, and build alignment on difficult technical decisions.

• Technical Depth: Deep understanding of mobile architecture, SDK design, concurrency, performance, and large-scale distributed systems. Experience building and maintaining merchant- or consumer-facing SDKs.

• Platform Thinking: The ability to generalize complex processes into simple, flexible services and SDKs that support multiple products and teams.

• Strong Ownership: A self-starter mindset with the ability to identify critical problems, determine what needs to change, and drive solutions to completion.

This role's annual base salary range is $235–$317k, plus RSUs. To*learn more about our compensation philosophy, please clickhere.

the company is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, marital status or any legally protected status.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

You must be work authorized in the United States without the need for new visa sponsorship. The company can support visa transfers but will not sponsor individuals for H-1B CAP applications.