Staff Python Engineer: Lead Scalable Backend

US Diversity Job Search; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 161,000 - 239,000; Full time

Job summary

PayPal in Austin, TX seeks a senior backend engineering leader to design, build, and scale cloud-native services. You will guide architecture for microservices and serverless workloads, mentor engineers, and set technical direction across Product, Infrastructure, and Operations.

You will develop in Python (Django or Flask), emphasize performance and reliability, and promote strong security practices while collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver impactful business outcomes.

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 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

Cloud-native

Microservices

Serverless

Python

Django/Flask

Security best practices

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Terraform

CDK

Redis

SQS

Kafka

Job description

PayPal in Austin, TX seeks a senior backend engineering leader to design, build, and scale cloud-native services. You will guide architecture for microservices and serverless workloads, mentor engineers, and set technical direction across Product, Infrastructure, and Operations.

You will develop in Python (Django or Flask), emphasize performance and reliability, and promote strong security practices while collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver impactful business outcomes.