Staff Software Engineer - Backend Python

Venmo; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 177,000 - 262,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Healthcare coverage

Paid time off

Job summary

Venmo, a PayPal service, is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join a fast-growing team that scales our payments backend and builds new features for 65 million active users. You will mentor junior engineers, guide technical directions, and collaborate with product managers to deliver robust solutions.

The role supports a balanced hybrid work model (3 days in office, 2 days remote) and a comprehensive benefits package, with opportunities to impact PayPal's payments ecosystem.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR equivalent.
• Mentor junior engineers and lead code/design discussions.
• Experience with Python or equivalent high-level language.
• Experience with distributed backend systems and cloud
• Experience building services on AWS; knowledge of Terraform a plus.

Responsibilities

• Act as project/lead engineer, coordinating team activities.
• Define technical tasks for other engineers and ensure timely delivery.
• Collaborate with product managers to refine requirements and scope.
• Own performance and availability of services; participate in on-call rotations.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to code/design reviews.

Skills

Python

Mentoring

Distributed systems

AWS

Terraform

Redis

Kafka

RDBMS

NoSQL

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s in CS

Tools

SQS

RabbitMQ

Kafka

Terraform

Job description

• Mentor junior engineers

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

This job delivers complete solutions spanning all phases of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). It involves advising management on project-level issues, guiding junior engineers, operating with little supervision, and applying knowledge of technical best practices.

Job Description

Essential 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

Minimum Qualifications

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

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications

What You Need To Know About The Role-

As a Senior Software Engineer, you would be a core member of the scrum team and work closely with staff engineers to build high quality product. 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.

Meet our team

Engineering is a craft, and at Venmo we want the internals of our software to be as elegant as the end user experience we are designing. We spend our days scaling our payment backend services and building new features to meet and exceed our user’s needs and wants. We teach and learn from one another and push each other to be at our creative and analytical best. We work to push our technology forward with respect to functionality, performance, reliability and scalability.

Your way to impact

You will have the opportunity to work on one of the biggest payments platforms that caters to 65 million active users and processes transactions worth billions of dollars. Given all the fun challenges, we are a fast-paced organization going through rapid growth that is solving technical challenges at exponential scale. As an organization, we have a strong culture of committing to goals and delivering on timelines.

Your day to day

• Key voice in team level processes (e.g., code & design review)
• Oversees projects, ensuring an accurate, complete, and operable solution is delivered, working with management as needed to fill gaps
• Collaborates with product managers to understand & refine requirements
• Serves as an expert to resolve technical inquiries of other employees
• Follows well established internal conventions and standard procedures
• Shares software development processes and standards with junior peers
• Leverages awareness of industry peer solutions to inform and validate technical decisions
• Anticipates consequences of implementation choices on future development and optimizes accordingly
• Contributes to code & design
• Own the performance and availability of the services as well as participate in on call rotations and provide support during incidences.
• Has an appetite to learn and contribute to complex projects alongside your colleagues.

What Do You Need To Bring-

• We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates.
• Bachelor’s and/or Masters in computer science, or a related field of study, or equivalent experience
• 5 plus years’ experience with Python or equivalent high-level programming language
• Advanced skills with RDBMS and NoSQL data stores, caching solutions (e.g. Redis, ElastiCache, Hazelcast) and messaging/queuing protocols/systems such as SQS/Kafka/RabbitMQ/Pulsar
• Competency in comparing the qualities of multiple implementation choices, including nonfunctional characteristics.
• Mentor junior engineers
• Understands runtime environment concepts (e.g Linux OS, Java Virtual Machine, python runtime) and behavior and can incorporate to predict performance characteristics of implementation choices.
• Experience with distributed services and backend systems
• Experience with building services on public cloud – preferably AWS. Alternatives, GCP, Azure
• Experience in managing infrastructure as code using Terraform
• Experience working with fault-tolerant and scalable distributed services and systems.

Subsidiary

Venmo

Travel Percent

0

The base pay for this role will depend on where you work and the relevant experience and expertise you bring. The expected range of pay for this role by location is:

Primary Location : Pay Range

San Jose, California: ($176,500.00 - $262,350.00 Annually)

Additional Location(s) : Pay Range

No other locations are assigned to this requisition currently.

Additional compensation for this role may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately. To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us.

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most.We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

Who We Are

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at [e-mail].

Belonging at PayPal

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.