Principal Data Architect
PayPal · Austin, TX
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- On site
- Full-time
- $250,000 / year
- Austin, TX
Job highlights
- Lead enterprise data architecture and strategy.
- Design and implement GCP-native data solutions.
- Drive data governance and quality initiatives.
- Influence adoption of data standards.
- Develop AI solutions for data remediation.
About the role
About PayPal
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
PayPal is seeking a Principal Data Architect with 15+ years of experience to lead the design and evolution of enterprise-wide data architecture. This role sits at the intersection of data engineering, analytics, instrumentation, and governance — driving how PayPal captures, structures, and democratizes data across its global payments platform. You will own the end-to-end data strategy for instrumentation pipelines, define and steward the enterprise Data Dictionary, and partner with analytics, product, and engineering teams to ensure data is accurate, discoverable, and trustworthy at scale.Job Description
Essential Responsibilities:- Develop and implement the overall data engineering strategy, aligning with corporate goals and objectives.
- Lead the design and execution of advanced data engineering projects to support strategic decision-making.
- Collaborate with executive leadership to identify and prioritize data-driven opportunities.
- Oversee the development and maintenance of data infrastructure, ensuring scalability and efficiency.
- Ensure compliance with data privacy and security regulations.
- Drive innovation in data engineering practices and tools, staying ahead of industry trends.
Additional Responsibilities and Preferred Qualifications
We are seeking a Principal Data Architect to lead the data strategy, instrumentation standards, and data quality transformation for the Checkout organization. This is one of the most strategically critical individual contributor roles in Checkout Engineering — a high-visibility position that demands both deep technical authority and the executive influence to shape how hundreds of engineers and product managers think about and work with data.The ideal candidate has an established track record of driving large-scale data transformations as an individual contributor in complex, matrixed organizations. You don't manage through headcount — you lead through technical credibility, organizational influence, and the ability to build durable systems and standards that outlast any single initiative.
Your Way to Impact
You will establish the data architecture foundation that enables the Branded Checkout organization to move from reactive data consumption to proactive, insight-driven product development. By creating a Center of Excellence for data instrumentation, a canonical Data Dictionary, and AI-powered governance tooling, you will directly accelerate PayPal's ability to experiment faster, make better product decisions, and democratize data access across one of the company's most critical engineering organizations.Your Day to Day
In this role you will:- Establish a Center of Excellence for Instrumentation: Define and operationalize instrumentation guidelines for the Branded Checkout organization. Set the standard for how events, signals, and behavioral data are captured across web, mobile, and backend surfaces. Create a governance model that scales across squads without creating bottlenecks.
- Own and Drive the Branded Checkout Data Dictionary: Design, build, and maintain the authoritative Data Dictionary for the XO organization — a single source of truth for data definitions, ownership, lineage, and quality standards. Ensure the Dictionary is living, versioned, and integrated into engineering workflows.
- Drive Engineering and Product Adoption of Data Standards: Partner with engineering leadership, product management, and data consumers to drive broad adoption of instrumentation best practices and the Data Dictionary. Influence without authority at scale — across dozens of squads and multiple product verticals within Checkout.
- Partner with Data & Analytics to Develop Instrumentation Standards: Work closely with the Data and Analytics organization to co-develop organization-wide instrumentation standards. Collaborate with peer architects to incorporate these standards into shared frameworks and platform tooling, making compliance the path of least resistance.
- Co-Architect Agentic Solutions for Instrumentation Remediation: Partner with other architects to design and deploy agentic AI solutions that systematically identify, prioritize, and remediate existing instrumentation that falls outside established standards — bringing the historical codebase into compliance at machine speed.
- Develop AI-Powered PR Review Agents for Instrumentation Governance: Design and implement AI agents that automatically review pull requests for instrumentation completeness, correctness, and adherence to standards. Establish an automated gatekeeping mechanism that embeds data quality into the software delivery lifecycle.
- Build a Self-Sustaining Data Culture in Engineering and Product: Design enablement frameworks, reference architectures, and self-service tooling that empower engineering and product teams to leverage data and run experiments independently — reducing dependency on the Data & Analytics team and accelerating the pace of learning across XO.
- Democratize Data Adoption Across Branded Checkout: Partner with the Data & Analytics organization to identify and remove barriers to data access, literacy, and utilization across Branded Checkout. Champion data-driven decision-making as a cultural norm, not just a technical capability.
- Cloud Data Architecture — GCP as Primary Platform: Design and implement scalable, cost-effective cloud-native data architectures on GCP (BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Vertex AI, Cloud Composer, and related services). Establish best practices for data lake / data warehouse design, streaming pipelines, and data mesh patterns in a cloud-first environment.
- Technical Leadership and Cross-Organizational Influence: Represent the Checkout data architecture perspective in company-wide technical forums. Mentor senior and staff engineers. Present architecture strategies, trade-offs, and investment proposals to senior engineering and product leadership. Set architecture direction, create clarity in ambiguity, and raise the engineering bar across the organization.
What You Need To Bring
Required Qualifications:- Minimum of 15 years of relevant experience in data architecture, data engineering, or related disciplines, with a Bachelor's degree or equivalent; advanced degree preferred
- Demonstrated Principal-level impact as an individual contributor — a track record of driving architecture decisions and data transformation programs across large, complex, matrixed organizations
- Deep expertise in cloud data architecture, with hands-on GCP experience required (BigQuery, Dataflow/Apache Beam, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer/Airflow, Vertex AI, GCS, Looker)
- Proven experience designing and implementing data instrumentation frameworks, event schemas, and behavioral analytics pipelines at scale
- Strong background in data governance, data quality frameworks, data lineage, and metadata management (e.g., Data Catalogs, Data Dictionaries, dbt)
- Experience building or deploying AI/ML or agentic solutions to automate data quality, code review, or pipeline management workflows
- Expertise in data modeling (dimensional, relational, and document models), stream and batch processing architectures, and distributed systems design
- Demonstrated ability to influence executive and senior engineering leadership without direct reporting authority
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to translate complex data architecture concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in payments, fintech, or high-volume e-commerce platforms with complex transactional data environments
- Familiarity with data mesh principles and experience implementing domain-oriented data ownership models
- Experience with experimentation platforms and A/B testing infrastructure; understanding of how instrumentation quality directly impacts experiment validity
- Knowledge of data privacy, compliance, and regulatory requirements (PCI-DSS, GDPR, CCPA) as they apply to data architecture in payments contexts
- Familiarity with additional cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and hybrid/multi-cloud data architectures
- GCP Professional Data Engineer or GCP Professional Cloud Architect certification
Leadership Expectations at the Principal Level
- Sets data architecture direction for a critical business domain and creates clarity amidst ambiguity
- Influences across organizational boundaries with strong technical judgment and pragmatic decision-making
- Builds durable standards and guardrails that improve quality and velocity simultaneously
- Models operational excellence and raises the engineering bar through technical mentorship and leverage
- Operates across Engineering, Product, Data Science, and Analytics — translating technical possibilities into business outcomes
What Success Looks Like (6–12 Months)
- A published and adopted Branded Checkout Data Dictionary, with measurable squad-level uptake
- Automated instrumentation governance in the CI/CD pipeline — PR review agents operational and reducing instrumentation defects before merge
- Agentic remediation pipeline actively backfilling and correcting legacy instrumentation gaps
- Instrumentation standards co-developed with Data & Analytics and embedded in shared engineering frameworks
- Measurable improvement in data completeness and signal quality for key Branded Checkout conversion funnels and experiments
- A self-service data enablement model adopted by Engineering and Product teams, reducing ad-hoc Data & Analytics support burden
Compensation
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.aspxCommitment 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 R0135644
Key skills/competency
- Data Architecture
- Data Engineering
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Data Governance
- Data Modeling
- Instrumentation
- AI/ML Solutions
- Leadership Influence
- Cloud Data Architecture
- Payments Data
Skills & topics
- Data Architect
- Data Engineering
- GCP
- BigQuery
- Data Governance
- Data Modeling
- Instrumentation
- AI
- Cloud Architecture
- Fintech
How to get hired
- Tailor your resume: Highlight 15+ years of data architecture experience and GCP expertise, emphasizing your impact on large-scale data transformations and governance.
- Showcase influence: Provide examples of driving data decisions and influencing leadership without direct authority.
- Demonstrate technical depth: Detail your hands-on experience with GCP services like BigQuery, Dataflow, and Vertex AI, and your knowledge of data modeling and governance frameworks.
- Prepare for interviews: Be ready to discuss your experience with data instrumentation, AI-driven solutions, and building data cultures.
- Align with values: Understand and articulate how your approach to data aligns with PayPal's core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness.
Technical preparation
Master GCP data services (BigQuery, Dataflow).,Design scalable data lakes and warehouses.,Implement data governance and quality frameworks.,Build and deploy AI/ML data solutions.
Behavioral questions
How do you influence without authority?,Describe a complex data transformation project.,How do you ensure data quality at scale?,How do you mentor senior engineers?
Frequently asked questions
- What specific GCP services are most critical for this Principal Data Architect role at PayPal?
- For this Principal Data Architect position at PayPal, deep hands-on experience with GCP services such as BigQuery, Dataflow/Apache Beam, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer/Airflow, Vertex AI, and GCS is essential. Proficiency in Looker for data visualization and analysis is also highly valued.
- How does PayPal approach hybrid work for a Principal Data Architect?
- PayPal offers a balanced hybrid work model for most employees, typically involving 3 days in the office for collaboration and 2 days flexible between the office or home. This allows for effective in-person teamwork while providing personal convenience.
- What is the expected experience level for a Principal Data Architect at PayPal?
- PayPal is seeking a Principal Data Architect with a minimum of 15 years of relevant experience in data architecture, data engineering, or related fields. An advanced degree is preferred, and a proven track record of Principal-level impact as an individual contributor is highly valued.
- How important is data governance and quality in this Principal Data Architect role?
- Data governance, data quality frameworks, data lineage, and metadata management are critically important. The role involves establishing a Center of Excellence for instrumentation, owning the Data Dictionary, and implementing AI-powered governance tooling to ensure data accuracy, discoverability, and trustworthiness at scale.
- What kind of impact can a Principal Data Architect have at PayPal?
- A Principal Data Architect at PayPal can have a significant impact by establishing the data architecture foundation for critical organizations, driving large-scale data transformations, democratizing data access, and accelerating product development through data-driven insights and faster experimentation.
- Does PayPal prefer candidates with experience in specific industries for this role?
- While not strictly required, PayPal prefers candidates with experience in payments, fintech, or high-volume e-commerce platforms, especially those with complex transactional data environments. Familiarity with data privacy and compliance regulations like PCI-DSS, GDPR, and CCPA is also beneficial.
- What are the key leadership expectations for a Principal Data Architect at PayPal?
- At the Principal level, leadership expectations include setting data architecture direction, influencing across organizational boundaries with strong technical judgment, building durable standards, mentoring engineers, and translating technical possibilities into business outcomes across Engineering, Product, Data Science, and Analytics.