Stripe Verified

Fintech, Payments, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Staff Software Engineer, Money Movement Platform

SeattleOnsiteFull TimeStaffPosted 2 months ago

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Required skills

Card Issuing
Payments
APIs
backend services
spend cards
debit cards
charge cards
card programs
cardholder lifecycle
commercial issuing

Nice to have

real-time transaction processing
strict latency requirements
correctness requirements
authorizations
ledgering
settlement

Role summary

Stripe is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its Card Issuing and Payments team. This role involves defining and driving the technical strategy for the end-to-end card issuing product, including APIs, backend services, and user-facing components. The engineer will own critical systems, identify infrastructure investments, and collaborate with cross-functional partners. Responsibilities include designing, building, and maintaining large-scale systems, debugging production issues, and mentoring senior engineers. The ideal candidate has 10+ years of experience, a strong track record in designing and shipping large-scale distributed systems, excellent API design instincts, and the ability to influence technical direction without direct authority. Preferred qualifications include experience with real-time transaction processing, card network protocols, and regulated financial services.

Who we are

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world's largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone's reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About the team

Money Movement teams are crucial in helping Stripe build platforms and product experiences that enables businesses all over the world to move money. We are currently looking for someone who can drive the technical vision for how Stripe moves money at a global scale. This role spans the stack, from the core financial APIs that all of Stripe’s products are built on, like balances, transfers and payouts, to the financial integrations we rely on to move billions of dollars in countries around the world. The teams also run infrastructure that abstracts payment networks globally to expose capabilities for moving money with a variety of characteristics like speed, currency, and cost. We are responsible for ensuring that money gets to its destination quickly, reliably and in a cost effective manner.

These systems are extremely central to our plans for the next 5-10 years and building them well will have an enormous impact on Stripe.

What you'll do

Help define and lead the technical roadmap for Money Movement.

Ensure our infrastructure is safely extensible, scalable, reliable and meets SLAs for both external and internal users.

Shape future proof interfaces that are easy to build against and meet the requirements of product teams.

Help drive sound technical decision making within Money Movement and lead technical conversations with other teams across Payments Infrastructure and Stripe.

Run, design, and code review for key components and ships in Money Movement.

Pair with the engineer manager to mentor and develop senior engineering talent on the teams.

You may be a fit for this role if you:

Have previously been in Technical Leadership roles driving technical work for a large group of engineers.

Have solid experience in architecting and designing large-scale and complex systems that delivered critical impact to a well-known business.

Have rich experience in driving, executing, and delivering high quality technical solutions.

Are skilled in gathering and effectively synthesizing users’ feedback and experience with platforms and product offerings.

Are skilled in working across engineering teams and other functions in building alignment, driving decision making, and communicating transparently.

Are effective in giving and receiving constructive feedback to/from peers and team members.

Are comfortable in working in ambiguously defined problem spaces, can identify the most valuable areas to direct your energy, and have delivered tangible results, as demonstrated in prior experiences.

Responsibilities

Scope, design, build, and maintain APIs, services, and large-scale systems that reliably and efficiently handle billions of money movement requests.

Debug and solve critical production issues across services and multiple levels of the stack. Mentor engineers to help them grow.

Collaborate with stakeholders across the company to build new features at large-scale, while improving internal engineering standards, tooling, and processes.

Collaborate effectively in a distributed and hybrid team, maintaining open communication and strong connections with colleagues.

Who you are

We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

Minimum requirements

10+ years of industry software engineering experience, with demonstrated impact at a staff or equivalent scope (leading initiatives across multiple teams or systems).

Proven track record designing and shipping large-scale user-facing products with distributed backend systems that are both highly available and financially correct.

Experience leading cross-functional engineering projects end-to-end, from requirements through architecture, delivery, and post-launch iteration.

Strong API design instincts and the ability to build simple, developer-friendly interfaces over inherently complex financial and regulatory requirements.

Ability to influence technical direction and align multiple teams without direct authority, with excellent written and verbal communication across engineers, product, and leadership.

High ownership mindset, such as comfortable with ambiguity, able to define the problem and the plan, not just execute a predefined spec.

Clear, precise communication on complex technical topics for both technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred qualifications

Experience building or operating real-time transaction processing systems with strict latency and correctness requirements (authorizations, payments, ledgering, settlement).

Familiarity with card network protocols, BIN sponsorship models, or issuing bank integrations (Visa, Mastercard, or equivalent).

Experience in regulated financial services such as compliance-aware system design, audit trails, financial controls, or KYC or KYB flows.

Background in embedded finance, card-as-a-service, or Banking-as-a-Service platforms. Experience with high-volume event-driven architectures and the reliability and consistency tradeoffs they introduce.

Track record of mentoring senior engineers and contributing meaningfully to engineering hiring and culture.

Sample Stripe interview questions

1
Design a Distributed LRU Cache
system designmedium
2
Design an application performance monitoring system
system designmedium
3
Design a rate limiter
system designmedium
4
What strategies would you use to ensure fault tolerance and data persistence in a distributed cache?
system designmedium
5
Design an autocomplete Typeahead Suggestion system.
system designmedium

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