Staff Software Engineer

PayPal

Confirmed live today High trust

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: Austin, TX
Salary: $160,500–$238,700 / yr
Posted: 14 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live today
Closes: Apr 11, 2027
Nearby: 99+ roles within 25 mi

Market check

Salary context

Competitive pay

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $199k

This role $200k

$128k $287k

below market most similar roles pay here above market

This role pays less than 62% of similar roles. Most pay $174,587–$222,875 — the blue band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $200k versus about $199k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About PayPal

PayPal is a leading global digital wallet and online payment system, founded in 1998, that allows individuals and businesses to send, receive, and manage funds securely in over 200 markets.

PayPal currently has 96 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $160,500–$259,158 across 91 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at PayPal

At a glance

TL;DR · Staff Software Engineer

Role Posting Log in to save

Staff Software Engineer The Staff Software Engineer serves as a technical leader for the API Management platform. In this role, you will coordinate engineering activities, set technical direction, and make critical design decisions affecting internal and external teams. You will own the design, implementation, and operational health of core components including governance, lifecycle, security, and observability. Key responsibilities include mentoring engineers, assessing implementation trade-offs, and managing platform availability. You will utilize Java, Python, GraphQL, REST, gRPC, and API gateways while managing rate limiting, OAuth2/OIDC, and versioning. Technical requirements include experience with RDBMS, NoSQL, Redis, Kafka, SQS, Terraform, and building distributed services on GCP or AWS. This position solves complex problems regarding the scalability, fault tolerance, and performance of global API management systems.

What does a Software Engineer earn in Texas?

Median $178175 from 187 postings across 44 companies.

See salary data

Skills

Java Python GraphQL REST gRPC API Gateway OAuth2 OIDC RDBMS NoSQL Redis Kafka SQS GCP AWS Terraform Observability SLOs

What you'll do

Own the design, implementation, and operational health of core API Management components.
Coordinate the activities of other engineers and determine specific technical tasks for the project.
Contribute to the technical roadmap by assessing implementation alternatives and trade-offs.
Mentor engineers at all levels and advise senior leaders on platform systems and strategy.
Own the availability and performance of the platform and participate in on-call incident response.
Proactively improve existing structures and processes to achieve operational and service objectives.
Represent the company to outside partners, customers, and industry organizations.

What we're looking for

5+ years of relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
8+ years of experience with Java, Python, or an equivalent high-level programming language (preferred).
Deep experience designing and operating APIs at scale including GraphQL, REST, gRPC, and authentication (preferred).
Experience with API management products or gateway platforms (preferred).
Advanced skills with RDBMS, NoSQL, Redis, and messaging systems like Kafka or SQS (preferred).
Expertise building fault-tolerant, scalable distributed services on public cloud, preferably GCP or AWS (preferred).
Experience managing infrastructure as code using Terraform (preferred).
Experience with observability, SLOs, and developer-facing platform products (preferred).

Save