Lead Software Engineer – Risk Solutions

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 Description Summary: This job makes technical decisions affecting multiple teams, establishes conventions and processes, handles multi-team initiatives, applies industry practices, communicates technical issues, mentors others, and partners with product management.
Job Description: Essential Responsibilities:

Makes technical decisions affecting multiple teams, crossing organizational boundaries
Establishes conventions & processes to be followed by other employees
Actions determine the utilization of company resources (people, money, assets) and affect the effectiveness of the company
Handles multiple, multi-team initiatives simultaneously, using judgement to prioritize among more issues than can be handled individually.
Understands evolving industry capabilities & practices and can judiciously apply up--to-date information for optimal results
Competent at communicating technical issues with non-technical audiences
Spreads their behavior, principles, and knowledge as a means of improving technical results of other employees (via many means – modeling behavior, 1:1s, working sessions, quality documentation)
Partners with product management, to ideate solutions to business problems & goals

Minimum Qualifications:

8+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

Additional Responsibilities And Preferred Qualifications Key Responsibilities Lead architecture and delivery of intelligent systems supporting PayPal's Risk and Fraud platforms — with strong emphasis on cloud, data, and backend service design. Build and maintain real-time and batch data pipelines, APIs, and event-driven services operating at petabyte scale and sub-second latency. Champion cloud-native engineering practices, especially within Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and big data ecosystems (e.g., BigQuery, Dataproc, Pub/Sub, Airflow). Integrate AI-assisted development tools into the engineering lifecycle (e.g., test-generation bots, RAG-based copilots, code accelerators) to boost developer efficiency and reliability. Partner closely with Product, Design, Data Science, and Analytics to translate domain goals into robust, scalable technical solutions. Provide technical leadership across the SDLC: architecture reviews, coding standards, security practices, scalability assessments, and release readiness. Drive engineering best practices: clean architecture, CI/CD automation, observability, and reusable component design. Mentor and support junior engineers, cultivating a culture of learning, ownership, and craftsmanship. Collaborate across teams to align on platform strategy and enable extensibility and reuse in shared infrastructure. Required Skills and Qualifications 10+ years of software engineering experience, including ownership of distributed, data-intensive systems in large-scale production environments. Strong expertise in cloud-native engineering, with a preference for GCP. Hands-on experience with BigQuery, Pub/Sub, Dataproc, Cloud Functions, or equivalent services. Proficient in backend development using Java, Python, or Node.js, with a deep understanding of microservices and service orchestration. Hands-on experience with Big Data frameworks: Apache Spark, Kafka, Hadoop, Hive, and Airflow. Experience designing and optimizing streaming architectures and near real-time processing systems. Strong understanding of data modeling, SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g., MySQL, MongoDB, Redis), and performance tuning at scale. Exposure to AI-assisted engineering tools or strong interest in leveraging such tools to improve software delivery. Solid grounding in computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, operating systems. Familiarity with DevOps, including CI/CD pipelines, automation, and performance monitoring. Excellent communication and collaboration skills; experience working across cross-functional teams. Preferred Qualifications Prior experience building or integrating with Risk, Fraud, or Trust & Safety systems at global scale. Exposure to agentic AI tools or developer copilots such as code-generation agents, test automation bots, or RAG-based assistants. Familiarity with AI/ML pipeline integration, such as feature stores, inference orchestration, or model monitoring (as a consumer). Knowledge of stream processing architectures (e.g., Kafka Streams, Apache Beam, Flink). Experience building shared platform components, SDKs, or internal frameworks across teams or domains. Awareness of privacy-preserving engineering, security best practices, and compliance-oriented systems. Ability to influence architecture decisions and lead cross-cutting technical efforts across multiple teams. Why This Role Matters This role is pivotal to shaping PayPal's future in AI-enabled Risk and Fraud engineering. You will be at the forefront of building trusted, secure, and intelligent platforms that scale globally. Your work will directly impact our ability to protect customers, accelerate innovation, and build the foundations for developer productivity and data intelligence across PayPal.
The base pay for this role will depend on where you work and the relevant experience and expertise you bring. The expected range of pay for this role by location is:
Primary Location : Pay Range:
San Jose, California : ($196,500.00 - $291,500.00 Annually)
Additional Location(s) : Pay Range:
Austin, Texas : ($178,500.00 - $265,100.00 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. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. 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 benefits to help you thrive in every stage of life. We champion your financial, physical, and mental health by offering valuable benefits and resources to help you care for the whole you.
We have great benefits including a flexible work environment, employee shares options, health and life insurance and more. To learn more about our benefits please visit https://www.paypalbenefits.com
Who We Are:
To learn more about our culture and community visit https://about.pypl.com/who-we-are/default.aspx
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 us at paypalglobaltalentacquisition@paypal.com.
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.
REQ ID R0134920