Staff Software Engineer, Backend Python
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 4, 2026. First seen by Alion on Nov 3, 2026. PayPal scores A on the Alion truth index.
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 acts as a project leader, coordinating the activities of other engineers, determining technical tasks, and improving existing structures and processes. It involves making technical decisions, collaborating with management to set standards, and representing the company to external partners.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:
Additional Responsibilities
- Lead engineering efforts and team level processes by defining outcomes for others, refining ongoing processes, and providing technical advice to senior leaders on systems, solutions, challenges, and strategy.
- Support end-to-end ownership of design, implementation and operational excellence of software components while proactively improving existing structures and processes.
- Contribute to the technical engineering roadmap by completing quality and thorough assessments of implementation alternatives and their associated trade-offs and providing recommendations.
- Provides technical leadership for a small team with minimum guidance from management or senior teammates.
- Design, estimate and implement new and refactored software services on the platform securely, reliably and at scale. Take ownership of quality of design and implementation of software components.
- Deliver high quality code on time and follow our SDLC process.
- Own the performance and availability of the services as well as participate in on call rotations and provide support during incidences.
- Have an appetite to learn and contribute to complex projects alongside your colleagues.
Additional Qualifications
- 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
- Ability to lead projects and mentor all levels of engineering staff, along with managing relationships with Product, Engineering Operations and non-technical business and support teams
- Expert with distributed services and backend systems
- Expertise with building services on public cloud - preferably AWS or GCP, Azure
- Experience in managing infrastructure as code using Terraform
- Experience working with fault-tolerant and scalable distributed services and systems.
Primary Location | Pay Range:
San Jose, California: ($176,500.00 - $262,350.00 Annually)
Additional Location(s) | Pay Range:
Austin, Texas: ($160,500.00 - $238,700.00 Annually)
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.
Subsidiary:
VenmoTravel Percent:
0PayPal 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 usat[email protected].
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.
Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.
We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.
Notice to Applicants and Employees who reside within New York City. Click here to view the notice.