Staff Software Engineer

As a Staff Software Engineer - Backend at PayPal in Chennai, TN, India, you will act as a project or system leader, guiding other engineers and defining technical tasks to achieve project objectives. You will proactively improve existing structures and processes, exercising judgment to reconcile competing priorities and identify optimal solutions. Your role involves noticing patterns, condensing repetition into generalized solutions, and collaborating with management to establish and enhance standards for engineering rigor.

In your day-to-day role, you will lead the design and development of GenAI-driven platforms, including intelligent chatbots, AI copilots, and automation tools for Site Reliability use cases. You will build and deploy machine learning models in production using technologies such as Python, LangChain, and LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI). Collaboration with product, infrastructure, and SRE teams will be key to translating reliability pain points into scalable AI/ML-powered solutions. You will also develop scalable front-end and backend services using React.js and Node.js for user-facing AI-powered applications and APIs, and drive system design and architecture decisions to ensure scalability, reliability, and maintainability of AI platforms.

This role requires 5+ years of relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree, or any equivalent combination of education and experience. Your work will enable automation at scale, reduce operational toil, and deliver real-time insights to empower engineers. You will be part of a collaborative, high-performance team bringing cutting-edge technology into mission-critical environments.

We are looking for candidates with a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. You should have 8+ years of experience designing, developing, and deploying AI/ML solutions, with a strong emphasis on LLMs, chatbots, and scalable architecture. Proficiency in Python, React.js, and Node.js is essential, along with hands-on experience building scalable applications and services. Expertise with LangChain, LangGraph, RESTful APIs, and cloud platforms, including deploying models in production, is required. A strong understanding of system design principles and experience architecting large-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems is crucial. Solid knowledge of ML pipelines, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and integrating LLMs with enterprise systems is also expected. A proven ability to lead cross-functional projects, mentor peers, and influence technical direction in fast-paced, Agile environments is necessary. Flexibility and a willingness to learn new technologies and adapt quickly are highly valued.