Principal Engineer, Agentic Systems

Job Summary

This role increases the effectiveness of software engineers, sets the technology roadmap, adapts roles to achieve technical goals, provides advice to senior executives, handles ambiguous situations, uses exploratory research for decisions, identifies improvement opportunities, mentors others, and enhances organizational performance.

• Increases results and effectiveness of all software engineers in a large domain
• Sets the technology roadmap for a domain
• Adapts the role to the need, selecting the most effective means of realizing technical goals
• Provides advice and counsel to senior executives within Pay Pal, influencing the development of multi-year business strategies
• Exercises wide latitude in determining objectives and approaches to assignments and takes initiative to achieve results
• Handles ambiguous and unfamiliar situations and uses creativity to deliver decisive resolutions
• Uses discovery and exploratory research, not being limited to technical domains, to make successful decisions
• Identifies themes and trends that span projects and teams, and finds broadly impactful opportunities for improvement
• Uses professional savviness to determine when industry-standard solutions can be adopted versus when a problem space warrants a novel solution ("build/buy")
• Mentors others as a means of propagating technical influence, and to enhance the performance of the organization

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

• 10+ years in software/ML engineering, with deep expertise in LLM-based agent systems
• Production experience building agentic platforms — multi-agent orchestration, tool‑use frameworks, MCP/ACP protocols
• Strong systems design skills — built platforms that handle millions of requests with high reliability
• Experience with payment APIs, authentication flows, or financial transaction systems
• Familiarity with the emerging agent protocol landscape and LLM tool‑use patterns at scale
• Published work, patents, or open‑source contributions in agentic AI is a plus

San Jose, California: $218,000 – $323,950 annually. Additional compensation may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation.

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 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, Pay Pal 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 paypalgloba