Staff Software Engineer, API Platform

About the role

Stripe seeks a Staff Software Engineer to own the design and delivery of critical API infrastructure that powers global payment processing and financial data movement. You will architect and evolve service frameworks that underpin fraud detection, settlement systems, and core banking integrations across the platform. This role involves defining platform standards, enforcing architectural patterns, and ensuring services remain highly available, observable, and scalable under extreme load. You will partner with product and infrastructure teams to translate complex business requirements into robust, developer-friendly service contracts. The position demands deep collaboration with distributed teams to drive adoption of service-oriented architecture and modern API design principles. You will mentor engineers on best practices for reliability, performance, and security in production systems. Success in this role will be measured by the scalability, resilience, and usability of the platform you help build. You will play a key role in shaping how thousands of engineers interact with Stripe's core infrastructure on a daily basis.

Key facts

What you'll do

Lead the design and implementation of scalable API platforms that serve internal and external customers across multiple domains.

Drive the evolution of service frameworks, abstractions, and client libraries to simplify how engineers interact with complex infrastructure.

Analyze intricate user needs and translate them into prioritized technical roadmaps that align with business objectives.

Own the full delivery lifecycle of high-impact projects, from initial discovery through design, implementation, testing, and rollout.

Provide architectural guidance and code-level mentorship to engineers working on services, databases, and distributed systems.

Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to define clear interfaces, contracts, and integration patterns for new features.

Ensure platform components meet stringent requirements for performance, security, observability, and fault tolerance.

Partner with product teams to prototype new capabilities and validate technical approaches before large-scale adoption.

Lead incident reviews and postmortems to drive improvements in system reliability and operational practices.

Champion the adoption of service-oriented architecture and infrastructure best practices across the organization.

Translate strategic product goals into technical execution plans that unblock engineering teams and accelerate delivery.

Contribute to open-source ecosystems and internal tooling that enhance developer experience and platform usability.

Evaluate emerging technologies and determine their applicability to Stripe's infrastructure roadmap.

Foster a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, and data-driven decision-making within the API platform organization.

Requirements

Bring a minimum of 12 years of cumulative technical experience with at least 5 years in strategic technical leadership roles.

Demonstrate extensive experience designing and delivering infrastructure products used by both internal teams and external customers.

Showcase a history of building and operating high-performance, reliable systems that scale to meet demanding usage patterns.

Possess deep knowledge of API design, abstractions, frameworks, and client library development for developer-facing platforms.

Have hands-on background building services, libraries, or tools that enable other engineers to be more productive.

Exhibit strong problem-solving skills, moving fluidly between high-level strategy and detailed implementation discussions.

Thrive in environments with high ambiguity and autonomy, taking ownership of outcomes without excessive supervision.

Communicate clearly and persuasively in writing and verbal discussions with technical and non-technical audiences.

Collaborate effectively with engineering leaders to define and execute on multi-year platform roadmaps.

Engage proactively with cross-functional partners to align technical decisions with business priorities and customer needs.

Maintain strong technical judgment when evaluating tradeoffs between speed, quality, scalability, and long-term maintainability.

Participate actively in code reviews, design discussions, and architectural decision records across the organization.

Commit to building inclusive team dynamics that encourage diverse perspectives and constructive feedback.

Adhere to Stripe's engineering standards, security practices, and operational runbooks rigorously.

Nice to have

Experience contributing to open-source projects or public APIs at scale.

Background working with financial services, payments, or regulated data systems.

Familiarity with service meshes, observability platforms, and large-scale distributed debugging tools.

Knowledge of container orchestration, infrastructure provisioning, and cloud platform services.

Track record of mentoring senior engineers and leading through technical influence rather than authority.

Practical notes

Employment is full-time.

Candidates must be eligible to work in the country where the position is located.

Visa sponsorship may be considered for roles based in San Francisco or Seattle, subject to policy and role requirements.

Relocation support may be available for qualified candidates based on business and policy criteria.

The position requires the ability to work from one of the listed locations on an ongoing basis.