Staff Data Engineer

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, facilitating connections, transactions, and payments online or in person.

We provide proprietary payment solutions, offering customers flexibility to use their accounts for purchases, receiving payments, and transferring/withdrawing funds. Consumers can exchange funds more safely with merchants using various funding sources, including bank accounts, PayPal/Venmo balances, credit products, cards, cryptocurrencies, or gift cards. Our products also enable safer transfers between friends and family. For merchants, we offer end-to-end payment solutions with authorization, settlement, instant fund access, payouts, customer connection tools, exchange/returns management, and risk management. We also reduce complexity in cross-border trade.

Our business is guided by core values: Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. These values ensure we work as one global team with customers at the center, while also caring for ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary

As a Staff Data Engineer, you will design and implement robust data systems to support critical business needs. You will collaborate closely with stakeholders to deeply understand requirements and deliver comprehensive data solutions. This pivotal role involves driving best practices in data engineering, meticulously ensuring data quality and integrity, and actively mentoring junior engineers to foster their growth and technical excellence.

Essential Responsibilities

• Lead and manage complex data engineering projects, ensuring timely delivery and strategic alignment with overarching business goals.
• Develop and maintain highly scalable data architectures and pipelines crucial for advanced data analysis and informed decision-making.
• Analyze intricate datasets to identify significant trends, patterns, and actionable insights that directly drive strategic initiatives.
• Collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams to comprehend diverse data needs and provide highly actionable insights.
• Ensure superior data quality and integrity through rigorous regular audits and comprehensive validation processes.
• Mentor and guide junior data engineers, cultivating a dynamic culture of continuous learning, innovation, and professional improvement.

Additional Responsibilities And Preferred Qualifications

Position Responsibilities

• Be a self-starter, capable of working independently or as a highly collaborative team member. Proactively identify and remove obstacles to ensure the timely delivery of products and goals.
• Write clean, solid, and scalable code that can process petabytes of data, enforcing engineering excellence throughout the organization.
• Improve data management efficiency by leveraging AI capabilities, refining processes, and implementing best practices.
• Embed Privacy-by-Design principles into all data solutions, ensuring full compliance with regulatory requirements.
• Provide expert technical leadership across the entire data product development lifecycle—spanning data engineering, architecture, and analytics—to design and deliver reusable, accessible, and high-quality data solutions.
• Design resilient data structures and comprehensive taxonomies that support standardization, integration, and alignment with critical business processes.
• Deliver exceptional technical leadership through incisive analytical thinking, pioneering innovation, and meticulous specifications.
• Drive data product execution and adoption using a robust, metrics-based approach.
• Define and clearly communicate the data strategy for credit products, ensuring alignment with PayPal’s technical direction, evolving credit strategies, and the broader external data ecosystem.
• Possess a strong product sense to identify pressing data challenges and significant opportunities, and accurately assess the impact of proposed data-driven solutions.
• Leverage enterprise frameworks, advanced governance tools, and reusable architecture patterns for Credit Risk and across various organizations.
• Foster influential cross-functional relationships through proactive collaboration, meticulous planning, and decisive leadership to design scalable solutions across multiple platforms and products.

Technical Leadership Qualities

• Exhibit strong collaboration skills and a proven ability to influence stakeholders across all organizations and levels within the company.
• Communicate clearly and succinctly to all levels within the organization, effectively translating organizational goals into actionable execution plans and measurable metrics.
• Possess the ability to connect, engage, and lead with empathy, fostering a positive and productive environment.
• Motivate others through a compelling shared vision and the confidence that empowers employees and teams to perform at their absolute best.
• Demonstrate a clear ability to delegate work effectively, empowering team members.
• Operate with unwavering transparency and honesty in all interactions.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of extensive experience in enterprise data management, coupled with deep expertise across disciplines including data governance, data architecture, and more.
• Proven experience with leading data management and governance tools and technologies.
• Demonstrated experience enabling successful data products within large, complex organizations.
• Proven experience independently developing and implementing recommended approaches to complex and ambiguous problems while making thoughtful trade-offs.
• Deep understanding and hands-on experience in various data platforms.
• Strong technical acumen, capable of quickly grasping the intricate technical details of a product or platform.
• Strong execution skills – a consistent ability to deliver tangible results.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and collaboration skills to effectively interact across diverse groups within PayPal.
• Comfortable working proficiently in a fast-paced, highly results-oriented environment.
• Shows initiative and consistently exhibits a “can-do” attitude.
• Demonstrated willingness to be flexible and adaptable to changing priorities, with the ability to motivate in a cross-functional organization.
• Able to see the “big picture” – understanding the end-to-end connection points associated with data and systems.
• Exhibit a passion for Data Management and Analytics.
• Strong business acumen and a keen interest to deeply understand PayPal’s credit use cases, data producers, and data consumers’ needs and pain points.

Bonus Qualifications

• Familiarity with AI/ML pipelines or AI-enhanced data systems (e.g., data discovery, data quality monitoring, or integrating ML into ETL flows).
• Passion for effectively bridging the gap between data engineering and machine learning engineering.
• Experience enabling sophisticated ML/AI workloads, such as building robust feature stores, developing training data pipelines, or establishing model monitoring infrastructure.
• Experience in financial services, with a strong preference for exposure to the credit risk domain.

Education

BS or advanced degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.

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.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.

Key skills/competency

• Data Engineering
• Data Architecture
• Data Pipelines
• ETL Development
• Big Data Technologies
• Data Governance
• SQL & NoSQL Databases
• Cloud Platforms (e.g., GCP, AWS, Azure)
• Python Programming
• AI/ML Integration