Staff Systems Engineer, Middleware Engineering

About Us

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale - tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters - to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

We are looking for a Staff Systems Engineer with strong experience in middleware engineering, reverse proxy technologies, Linux systems, REST-HTTP integrations, messaging technologies, and GenAI-enabled engineering practices. This role requires someone who can operate in mission-critical, multi-tenant environments, support quick turnaround needs, and partner closely with SRE teams to safely deliver production changes.

1. Overall Responsibility

The Staff Systems Engineer will be responsible for designing, configuring, deploying, and troubleshooting middleware and reverse proxy platforms that support critical enterprise applications.

Key responsibilities include:

• Own and support middleware platforms, NGINX, and Apache HTTP Server across lower and production environments.
• Design and operate multi-tenant reverse proxy solutions, especially using NGINX.
• Support mission-critical systems with fast issue resolution and reliable change execution.
• Partner with SRE teams to validate and push changes to production.
• Drive work with a strong focus on ROI, innovation, automation, reliability, and operational efficiency.
• Apply GenAI knowledge, including MCPs, tools, and skills, to improve engineering productivity.
• Maintain strong documentation for configurations, deployments, troubleshooting, and handovers.
• Collaborate with global teams and participate in after-hours sync-up or handover calls at least once per week.

2. Key Responsibilities

• Install, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot middleware technologies.
• Configure and support NGINX and Apache HTTP Server for routing, reverse proxying, SSL-TLS, load balancing, redirects, and upstream connectivity.
• Work extensively in Linux environments for deployment, troubleshooting, log analysis, scripting, and service management.
• Support REST APIs, all major HTTP methods, HTTP headers, status codes, authentication flows, and API integration behavior.
• Work with messaging technologies and integration patterns for synchronous and asynchronous communication.
• Support secure integration patterns including mTLS, certificate handling, service-to-service communication, monitoring, and alerting.
• Troubleshoot production issues using logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, and platform telemetry.
• Work with SRE teams on production readiness, change approvals, deployment validation, rollback planning, and post-deployment monitoring.
• Contribute to automation, operational improvements, reusable patterns, and reliability-focused engineering.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, configuration guides, deployment steps, and incident notes.
• Demonstrate a positive, collaborative attitude and support cross-geography teamwork.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 2 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 0 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 8+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong hands-on skills with NGINX - Apache HTTP Server, Linux, middleware technologies, REST-HTTP, and messaging systems.
• Knowledge of mTLS, integration patterns, monitoring, and alerting.
• Ability to support mission-critical production environments with quick turnaround times.
• Experience partnering with SRE teams to push changes to production.
• Strong documentation skills.
• Positive attitude and willingness to support after-hours cross-geography handover or sync-up calls at least once per week.
• Prior experience as a middleware engineer, systems engineer, platform engineer.
• Deep hands-on experience with NGINX in high-availability, multi-tenant environments.
• Experience with Apache HTTP Server, SSL-TLS, virtual hosts, proxy modules, and rewrite rules.
• Familiarity with messaging platforms such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, IBM MQ, ActiveMQ, or similar tools.
• Experience with observability tools for monitoring, alerting, logging, tracing, and dashboards.
• Knowledge of automation using shell scripting, Python, Ansible, Terraform, or CI-CD pipelines.
• Exposure to container or cloud-native environments such as Docker, Kubernetes, or cloud platforms.
• Practical understanding of GenAI workflows, including MCPs, tools, skills, AI-assisted troubleshooting, and documentation generation.
• Ability to identify high-value work that improves ROI, reduces operational toil, and increases platform reliability.
• Strong communication, ownership, mentoring, and stakeholder-management skills.

Information for US Applicants

For roles located in the US, the estimated salary range for this position is $133,300.00 to $ 213,400.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity.Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.

Work Hours

Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements

This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements

This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.