Sr Software Engineer - Backend; Python

Company

Pay Pal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years, creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure. We operate a global, two‑sided network that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers, offering proprietary payment solutions and a platform for seamless transactions worldwide.

Senior Staff Software Engineers are strategic technical leaders shaping the architecture, scalability, and evolution of systems that power millions of secure global transactions every day. As a Senior Staff Backend Engineer (Python), you’ll define and execute Pay Pal’s long‑term backend architecture strategy, drive innovation and reliability across platforms, and mentor senior engineering talent to raise the technical bar.

• Makes technical decisions affecting multiple teams, crossing organizational boundaries.
• Establishes conventions and processes that other employees follow.
• Determines the utilization of company resources and affects overall effectiveness.
• Handles multiple, multi‑team initiatives simultaneously and prioritizes among competing issues.
• Stays current on industry capabilities and applies up‑to‑date information for optimal results.
• Communicates technical issues with non‑technical audiences.
• Shares principles and knowledge to improve technical results of other employees (via modeling behavior, 1:1s, working sessions, documentation).
• Partners with product management to ideate solutions to business problems and goals.

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

• 8+ years architecting, building, and operating cloud‑native, distributed systems at meaningful scale.
• Track record of raising the engineering bar through design standards, automated quality gates, SLO ownership, and a culture of blameless post‑mortems.
• Prototype rapidly, run A/B tests, and turn promising spikes into reliable production services.
• Hands‑on experience applying machine‑learning or large‑language‑model techniques for personalization, risk, search, or developer productivity.
• Deep understanding of service design, data modeling, asynchronous messaging, and API craftsmanship with a privacy‑by‑design approach.
• Explains complex trade‑offs in plain language and helps seasoned engineers grow through candid feedback and sponsorship.
• Aligns product, design, and compliance partners around a technical vision and rallies other teams to deliver on it.

The Consumer Engineering team powers the experiences that millions of Pay Pal customers use every day to send, spend, and manage their money safely and effortlessly. We design and build reliable, high‑performance systems that drive trust and simplicity across Pay Pal’s global ecosystem, partnering closely with product, design, and data science.

We offer a flexible work environment, employee share options, health and life insurance, and more. For more information, visit .

• Seniority level:
  Senior Staff
• Employment type:
  
  Full‑time
• Industry: Software Development, Financial Services, and Technology

Pay Pal 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, genetic information, marital status, public assistance status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Reasonable accommodations are provided for qualified individuals with disabilities.

We strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Our workforce is diverse and inclusive, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate belonging at Pay Pal.