Staff SW Engineer - Backend/DevOps

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world. Join Visa and do work that matters — to you, to your community, and to the world.

Progress starts with you.

The Opportunity

We are looking for a talented, curious, and highly skilled Software Engineer who is passionate about building reliable, scalable, and secure systems.

In this role, you will be a senior individual contributor within a cross-functional agile team, responsible for designing, developing, and operating backend services that power Visa’s global platforms. You will contribute technical depth, support team execution, and help raise engineering standards through hands-on delivery and mentorship.

The Work Itself

• Design and develop backend systems that support high-volume, mission-critical platforms serving customers worldwide.

• Build scalable, resilient, and secure services aligned with Visa’s engineering standards.

• Collaborate cross-functionally to create technical designs and implement high-quality solutions.

• Actively contribute to product quality, reliability, and performance improvements.

• Develop extensible services, APIs, and shared components.

• Participate in architecture and design discussions within the product team.

• Leverage modern technologies to build next-generation payment, transaction, and real-time processing systems.

• Support production systems through monitoring, incident response, and continuous optimization.

• Contribute to knowledge sharing and mentorship within the engineering team.

Essential Functions

• Develop enhancements and modifications to existing backend systems using extensible and maintainable design patterns.

• Implement secure, performant, and scalable code that complies with internal standards and regulatory requirements.

• Build and maintain automation for testing, deployment, and operational workflows.

• Participate in code reviews, design reviews, and technical discussions.

• Engage in on-call rotations and incident response activities.

• Analyze system telemetry, logs, and metrics to identify improvement opportunities.

• Propose and implement targeted improvements in system performance, reliability, and maintainability.

• Maintain technical documentation and contribute to operational runbooks.

The Skills You Bring

Energy and Experience

• A growth mindset with enthusiasm for solving complex backend and systems problems.

• Experience delivering reliable services in large-scale production environments.

Technical Expertise

• Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Java, Python, C#, C++).

• Experience designing and building RESTful and event-driven APIs.

• Solid understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, and fault tolerance.

• Experience working with relational and NoSQL databases.

• Familiarity with messaging systems, caching, and asynchronous processing.

Builder and Problem Solver

• Proven ability to build, deploy, and operate scalable backend platforms.

• Strong debugging, performance tuning, and troubleshooting skills.

Learner

• Continuous drive to learn and adopt modern backend and cloud technologies.

Partnership

• Experience collaborating with Product, QA, DevOps, and Agile teams.

• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly and effectively.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Basic Qualifications
•5+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 2 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 0 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 8+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications
•6 or more years of work experience with a Bachelors Degree or 4 or more years of relevant experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or up to 3 years of relevant experience with a PhD
•Master's degree in Math, Science, Engineering, or Computer Science, Information Systems or related field AND minimum three (3) years of experience in a directly related field.
•Bachelor's degree in Math, Science, Engineering, or Computer Science, Information Systems or related field AND minimum five (5) years of experience in a directly related field.
•Minimum eight (8) years of directly related experience.
•Experience developing enterprise-grade backend platforms and services.
•Strong knowledge of API design, service integration, and system interoperability.
•Experience working with distributed databases and data pipelines.
•Familiarity with microservices, service meshes, and container platforms.
•Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.
•Exposure to high-volume transactional systems or fintech platforms.
•Understanding of secure development practices and compliance standards.
•Experience participating in system design and architecture reviews.

Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements: This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements: This position will be performed in an office setting.  The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer.  Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.  Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.

U.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated salary range for this position is 131,600.00 to 210,300.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity. Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401 (k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.