Principal Software Engineer

Role Description

We're seeking an experienced C++ engineer to join our Platform Payments team, working on Ticketmaster's mission-critical payment processing systems. These systems process millions of transactions monthly across multiple payment methods and 20+ gateway providers, powering real-time payments for culture-defining live events at massive global scale.

You'll work across a mature C/C++ codebase spanning three decades — from pre-standard patterns in our core authorization gateway to C++17 in our Bazel monorepo. The immediate work is maintenance and strategic modernization of these systems, but this role is explicitly designed to grow:

• From legacy renovation into systems design
• gRPC service architecture
• New technology adoption including Rust

This is not a maintenance job with a maintenance ceiling. You'll work on systems that power how fans pay for live events worldwide — at a scale where a misconfiguration can cause thousands of payment failures during a major onsale. The intellectual challenge is real: strategic modernization of systems spanning three decades of C++, with a clear trajectory into new technology.

There is tremendous green-field work ahead:

• Decomposing legacy IPC into gRPC services
• Strengthening real-time fraud defenses during peak onsales
• Optimizing seamless global checkout
• Integrating new payment methods
• Expanding embedded finance that shapes not just ticket purchases but the full in-venue experience

A strong engineer in this role will meaningfully shape the direction of these critical systems.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional C++ development experience in production environments
• Modern C++ fluency
• Strong understanding of systems programming, including memory management, concurrency, and performance optimization
• Ability to reason about undefined behavior, and its practical consequences across platforms
• Systematic debugging methodology
• Toolchain understanding and cross-compilation concerns
• Proficiency with build systems — Bazel experience highly valued
• Experience working with legacy codebases older than 10 years
• Experience with or strong interest in payment processing or financial transaction systems
• Deep knowledge of security best practices
• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, Codex)
• Understanding of protocols and RESTful API design
• Experience with Linux/Unix environments
• Rust experience or genuine interest in learning it
• gRPC experience or familiarity with service decomposition from monolithic architectures
• Payment gateway integration experience (Chase Paymentech, Braintree, Adyen, or similar)
• PCI-DSS compliance knowledge and implementation experience
• Experience with platform migrations (e.g., Windows to Linux, MSVC to Clang)
• Bazel build system expertise
• Performance profiling experience
• Experience with shared memory, IPC frameworks, or low-level concurrency primitives
• Kafka or other event streaming platforms experience
• OpenSSL/cryptographic libraries hands-on experience
• Familiarity with AI-powered code review and static analysis tools
• Awareness of security considerations when using AI tools with legacy or under-documented systems

Requirements

• Maintain and strategically modernize high-throughput payment processing systems handling real financial transactions in real time
• Drive platform migration work, including migrating a core Windows C++ authorization gateway to Linux via Clang and Bazel
• Develop robust payment integrations with third-party gateways (Chase Paymentech, Barclays, HSBC, AMEX, Adyen, Braintree, Klarna, Shift4, and others)
• Decompose legacy IPC frameworks into gRPC services
• Implement security-critical features involving encryption, PCI compliance, and sensitive payment data handling
• Optimize performance of transaction processing pipelines
• Incrementally steer legacy codebases toward modern C++ practices
• Design and implement comprehensive testing including unit tests, integration tests, and fuzz testing for security-critical components
• Debug and resolve production issues in systems with complex interdependencies
• Collaborate with payment operations teams to onboard new payment methods and gateway providers
• Ensure compliance with PCI-DSS and other financial industry standards
• Participate in on-call rotation for production payment system support

Benefits

• Medical, vision, dental and mental health benefits for you and your family
• Access to a health care concierge
• Flexible or Health Savings Accounts (FSA or HSA)
• Free concert tickets
• Generous paid time off including paid holidays, sick time, and personal days
• 401(k) program with company match
• Stock reimbursement program
• New parent programs including caregiver leave
• Fertility, adoption, foster, or surrogacy support
• Career and skill development programs with School of Live
• Tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment
• Volunteer time off
• Crowdfunding match