Sr Software Engineer

Job Summary

Venmo's identity infrastructure is foundational — it underpins trust, safety, and compliance for every transaction on the platform. This role enables a Sr. Staff Software Engineer to own a high‑stakes technical domain at scale on Pay Pal’s platform with the speed of a product people love.

• Make technical decisions affecting multiple teams across organizational boundaries.
• Establish conventions and processes to be followed by other employees.
• Drive utilization of company resources (people, money, assets) and affect the effectiveness of the company.
• Handle multiple, multi‑team initiatives simultaneously, prioritizing among more issues than can be handled individually.
• Understand evolving industry capabilities & practices, applying up‑to‑date information for optimal results.
• Communicate technical issues with non‑technical audiences.
• Spread behavior, principles, and knowledge to improve technical results of other employees through modeling, 1:1s, working sessions, and documentation.
• Partner with product management to ideate solutions to business problems & goals.
• Set technical direction for Venmo's identity platform, covering authentication, authorization, identity verification, and fraud risk systems.
• Partner with Pay Pal's platform and security teams to align on shared identity standards and reusable infrastructure.
• Lead architectural reviews and define engineering standards for building, scaling, and securing systems.
• Mentor and develop senior engineers through design docs, code reviews, technical debates, and examples.
• Collaborate with Product, Legal, Compliance, and Security to translate regulatory and risk requirements into technical solutions.
• Identify and address risks proactively to prevent incidents.
• Own performance and availability of services, participate in on‑call rotations, and support incidents.

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

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time on identity, authentication, or security‑critical systems at scale.
• Deep expertise in identity and access management protocols such as OAuth
  2.0, OIDC, SAML, FIDO2/Web Authn.
• Track record of defining and shipping large‑scale distributed systems, leading technical strategy across multiple teams.
• Hands‑on experience with backend systems at scale (Python, Java, Go, or similar) and cloud (AWS) and security engineering fundamentals.
• Experience designing systems that meet regulatory requirements (KYC, AML, GDPR, PCI) and translating compliance constraints into engineering decisions.
• Strong communication skills: design docs, executive reviews, explaining technical tradeoffs to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Expertise with distributed services and backend systems; experience managing infrastructure as code using Terraform.

Base pay varies by location and experience. Pay ranges:

• San Jose, California: $196,500 – $291,500 annually.
• Austin, Texas: $178,500 – $265,100 annually.

Additional compensation may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation.

Pay Pal provides equal employment opportunity 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. Pay Pal also provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.

If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, contact paypalgloba