Software Engineer, Early Career

Stripe OpportunityStripe is a technology company focused on improving the conditions for economic growth and prosperity. We build programmable financial infrastructure, rethinking from first principles how financial services should work, to make it easier and cheaper for any business to start and scale. More than 10 million businesses build on Stripe, spanning the economic frontier—from solo founders to established enterprises—united by a practical focus on growth. The most ambitious companies in the world use Stripe as core infrastructure to grow faster. They process trillions of dollars a year on Stripe, equivalent to around 1.6% of global GDP. While economic growth makes everyone better off, open markets also enable greater variety. When any business can easily serve a global customer base, the quality and diversity of products in the world increase, and craft and creativity are unleashed into the smallest niches. Our own growth is wholly contingent on the success of the businesses building on Stripe. We therefore invest back into our technology at an unusual rate. We make upgrades to our products every single day to deliver compounding gains to our customers. We maintain some of the most reliable APIs on the internet. We build entirely new pieces of financial infrastructure to enable new ideas. And our significant advances in risk and fraud infrastructure over many years are making the internet economy safer and more accessible.Though people at Stripe don't tend to take themselves seriously, Stripe is a fairly serious place: our customers are depending on us for their livelihoods. We admire ambition, intensity, curiosity, humility, and rigor. The most effective people become knowledgeable about many domains besides their own. Any company is an applied exercise in understanding some aspect of society or the market. In working with so many (especially the new and innovative ones), we think that Stripe is one of the very best places to learn about how the world works.Stripe is large enough that individual products and projects can be rapidly deployed to a meaningful fraction of the world's businesses, but small enough that individual agency still has outsized impact. Small teams can impact how millions of businesses grow. Right now the global economy is replatforming around AI, creating new opportunities for growth. We're at the center of this, and we think the best work is still in front of us.To meet this moment, we're looking for people who move with urgency, like hard problems, and want their work to matter at a time of great change. If that's you, there's no better place to build your career.Ambitious builder: You're energized by building solutions without clear precedent and solving problems with far-reaching consequences. Successful Stripes are deeply curious, and prefer the joy of discovery to the comfort of certainty.Rigorous thinker: You appreciate that things worth doing are rarely simple. You enjoy working on problems that have never been tackled before.Adaptable problem solver: You adapt quickly and treat obstacles as opportunities. At Stripe we embrace kindness while encouraging Stripes to take measured risks and act boldly, even in the absence of consensus.Minimum requirements:Must be available to start full-time before December 1, 2026A Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science or a directly related field, obtained by summer 2026, or equivalent work experienceNew grad candidates should have no more than 18 months of professional experience (excluding internship experience)Experience and familiarity with programming, either through side projects or classwork. We work mostly in Java, Ruby, JavaScript, Scala, and Go. We believe new programming languages can be learned if the fundamentals and general knowledge are present.Experience from either previous internships or working collaboratively on multi-person coding projects (in a university or professional setting).Ability to learn unfamiliar systems and form an understanding of those systems, through independent research and working with a mentor or subject matter experts.Clear written communication skills, with the ability to explain your work to stakeholders, team members, and other Stripes.Ability to leverage AI tools to accelerate development while applying rigorous critical thinking and professional judgement to review, refine, and validate all outputs.Preferred qualifications:One or more areas of specialized knowledge (frontend, backend, infrastructure or other technologies) balanced with general skills and knowledge.Experience in code review practices, and an understanding of how to safely update production systems.Familiarity with navigating and managing work in large code bases.Experience leading small projects independently, and contributing to larger projects alongside peers.Ability to operate with high agency in navigating complex technical obstacles independently, knowing precisely when to unblock oneself and when to ask for help.