Staff Software Engineer, Payment Systems

at Stripe

USD 224,000-336,000 per year

SENIOR

✅ On-site

Tech Stack
Tag name is followed by "@" symbol and proficiency level value. About proficiency levels:

1-2 — basic awareness. Minimal hands-on experience, and a rudimentary understanding of the technology's purpose;

3-6 — daily use. Comfortable and regular usage, capable of handling common tasks and challenges related to the technology;

7-9 — you are an expert, you can teach others, you know all the pitfalls and tricks;

10 — exceptional knowledge, comprehensive understanding, and adeptness in all aspects of the technology, including advanced problem-solving. Think twice before claiming or demanding such level.

AI API @ 4 Airflow @ 6 Communication @ 6 Distributed Systems @ 4 Fraud @ 4 Java @ 6 Kafka @ 6 Leadership @ 8 Machine Learning @ 3 MongoDB @ 6 Observability @ 3 Payments Python @ 6 Ruby @ 6 Technical Leadership @ 8 TypeScript @ 6

Details

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world's largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Stripe's mission is to increase the GDP of the internet.

About the Team

Payment Intelligence comprises multiple product teams building AI-first solutions for fraud and abuse, payment optimization, disputes, authentication, and merchant analytics. The team includes machine learning engineers and full-stack software engineers working at the scale of nearly every Stripe transaction.

Responsibilities

Define technical strategy for multiple experiences across the Payment Intelligence portfolio, with a focus on quality and performance.
Champion a quality-first engineering culture by establishing standards, tooling, and processes that make it easy to ship high-quality code at scale.
Partner with some of Stripe's largest merchants to co-build the future of payment-centric intelligence.
Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, and machine learning colleagues to ship high-quality software.
Work across the stack, contributing to infrastructure and foundational systems as well as front-end, API, and machine-learning-adjacent projects.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years in a strategic technical leadership role.
Experience leading engineering teams working on distributed systems, API design, and user-facing products.
A proven track record of delivering pragmatic solutions that accelerate business growth.
Ability to drive projects at a high level while remaining hands-on and contributing directly to technical solutions when necessary.
Effective communication skills and a proven ability to work across teams, organizations, and functions.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with payment systems and/or fraud detection.
Familiarity with machine learning systems in production, including model serving, training pipelines, observability, and evaluation.
Prior experience building products from 0 to 1, from an initial concept through production deployment.
Experience with a range of software languages and frameworks. The stack includes Java, Ruby, Python, TypeScript, Kafka, Flyte, Airflow, and MongoDB.
Experience navigating ambiguity in a fast-moving organization, making confident technical decisions with incomplete information and adapting when constraints change.