Senior Engineer – Backend

Senior Backend Engineer (Python) at PayPal

Join PayPal's Application Support Engineering Team as a Senior Staff Software Engineer. In this role, you will be instrumental in steering the team's direction, collaborating with resources to build and evolve our Payments Processing Operations. As an individual contributor, you will work closely with cross-functional groups, including domain engineering, product, and merchant support teams, with a strong focus on delivering customer-centric solutions. This position demands exceptional problem-solving and collaboration skills to ensure customer needs are met efficiently and effectively.

About the Team

Our team works directly with customers and internal stakeholders to resolve daily engineering issues and develop capabilities that enhance merchant observability and experiences. We focus on key operational metrics, emphasizing availability, reliability, and observability within the Braintree Gateway Platform. As a hands-on Senior Software Engineer with AI/ML expertise, you will design and implement AI-driven solutions to improve platform stability, enhance observability, and elevate customer experiences. You will be the primary point of contact and a key decision-maker for technology implementation in Process and Excellence, responsible for selecting and deploying technologies that boost operational efficiency and drive continuous improvement. You will collaborate closely with customers and internal stakeholders to address and resolve their day-to-day challenges, ensuring seamless operations and high customer satisfaction.

Your Impact

As a valued team member, you will design and guide fellow engineers in implementing automated solutions to improve operational efficiencies and enhance merchant experiences. Your contributions will streamline processes, reduce operational costs, and significantly boost productivity, directly influencing our ability to provide outstanding merchant support and fostering stronger relationships for organizational success and growth. Your role will be pivotal in aligning technological advancements with strategic goals, positioning PayPal as an industry leader.

Your Day-to-Day Responsibilities

• Demonstrate a customer-centric mindset in all daily tasks.
• Respond to critical issues and support platform stability.
• Develop into a strong, well-rounded engineer with an investigative mind, enhanced troubleshooting/debugging skills, and dedicated customer focus.
• Set team goals, define strategy, and foster a collaborative and innovative team environment.
• Develop a strong sense of ownership for the application stack, possessing great analytical and problem-solving skills, in-depth knowledge of the latest technologies, self-learning ability, and keen attention to detail.
• Drive towards operational excellence, acting as a guiding force and collaborating with the team to reach the next phase of development.
• Develop advanced tools and automation solutions for efficient operations management and enhanced merchant experience observability through code.
• Improve the operational quality, reliability, and stability of our systems.
• Provide valuable issue intelligence for major issues by identifying application, monitoring, process, and product gaps, proposing short-term solutions, and driving long-term solutions with technology/product teams.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including product managers, merchant-facing teams, and other engineering groups, to identify automation and process improvement opportunities.
• Lead and mentor a team of engineers, providing technical guidance and fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.
• Drive projects to successful completion, ensuring scalable, reliable, and strategically aligned solutions.
• Recognize, validate, and evangelize emerging technologies and architectures that align with business objectives.
• Advance your technical skills with the Application Engineering team at PayPal.

What You Need to Bring

• 8+ years of software product development experience.
• Proven experience in building scalable, available, and high-performance web applications and services.
• Results-oriented mindset with a strong customer focus.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced agile development environment.
• Proven cross-functional collaboration skills with teams of 10-15 engineers.
• Experience in developing, troubleshooting, and debugging complex multi-tier distributed applications.
• Proficiency in Python.
• Proficiency in machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence techniques.
• Experience with AI/ML frameworks and libraries such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or scikit-learn is a plus.
• Experience in programming languages commonly used in AI/ML, such as Python or R.
• Hands-on experience with databases such as PostgreSQL and Oracle.
• Hands-on experience with Unix/Linux environments.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms such as Datadog and Splunk.
• Familiarity with Tableau or other equivalent Business Intelligence and Analytics Software.
• Familiarity with scripting languages like Shell and Perl is a plus.
• Previous experience with Incident Management or Production Support is highly desirable.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.

Desirable Technical Skillset:

• Proficiency in Python.
• Experience in building and maintaining large distributed systems on major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Experience with REST APIs, Web Services, Unit Testing, and build tools.
• Hands-on experience with databases such as PostgreSQL, Oracle.
• Hands-on experience with Unix/Linux environments.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms such as Datadog and Splunk.
• Experience with scripting languages like Shell and Perl is a plus.
• Previous experience with Production Support and Incident Management is highly desirable.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.