Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer On Startup ProductsStripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world's largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone's reach while doing the most important work of your career.The Startup Products team builds Stripe Atlas and other products that help founders start and run a company from anywhere in the world. We believe startups are one of the most effective ways to solve the world's problems, and we want to give founders a running start—and keep them running.We help founders form companies, raise capital, execute critical legal agreements, access the internet's best tools, and automate their operations while feeling ambitious, smart, and assured. Our goal is to help more startups reach product-market fit, faster.Our team comprises high-agency, high-ownership product thinkers who genuinely care about founders. Everyone is responsible for making our products the best they can be and ensuring our roadmap contains the highest-impact work for our users.We have a broad and ambitious roadmap spanning global company formation, legal and financial workflows, AI-enabled operations, and products beyond Atlas. Delivering it requires strong technical leadership to shape future investments, de-risk complex initiatives, and build durable partnerships across Stripe.As a Staff Software Engineer on Startup Products, you will shape the technical strategy for the team while leading major 0?1 products from early exploration through launch and iteration. You will turn ambiguous opportunities into clear technical plans, align teams around those plans, and remain hands-on throughout execution.You will work across product surfaces, services, APIs, data models, and integrations with internal and external systems. You will partner closely with Product, Design, Legal, Data, Operations, and engineering teams across Stripe to create experiences that make complex and consequential tasks feel simple and trustworthy for founders.ResponsibilitiesDefine and drive technical strategy across Startup Products, connecting near-term product delivery to a cohesive, durable engineering vision.Lead large, ambiguous 0?1 initiatives from problem definition and architecture through implementation, safe launch, and iteration.Design, build, and maintain polished user experiences, reliable backend services, APIs, and systems.Identify technical risks, dependencies, and foundational investments early, creating incremental plans that de-risk the roadmap and accelerate future work.Partner with engineering teams across Stripe, building alignment and influencing their roadmaps and priorities when Startup Products depends on shared capabilities.Work directly with founders to understand their needs and translate complex legal, financial, and operational workflows into intuitive products.Raise the team's engineering bar through clear standards, strong documentation, mentoring, and constructive technical feedback.Advise product and engineering leadership on emerging opportunities, technical constraints, and investments needed to support the team's long-term ambitions.Minimum requirements10+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of owning large, ambiguous systems end-to-end.Demonstrated experience defining and delivering large, ambiguous software initiatives from early product and technical exploration through production launch.Strong full-stack engineering skills, including experience building reliable backend services and polished user-facing product experiences.Ability to create technical direction and align teams with different priorities and constraints without relying on direct authority.Product-minded engineering judgment, with a deep commitment to understanding users and delivering meaningful outcomes for them and the business.Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to move between strategic discussions and detailed technical decisions.A high quality bar and attention to detail across product experience, implementation, reliability, and operational readiness.Preferred qualificationsExperience with early stage startups and a deep understanding of the challenges founders face all over the world.Experience building 0?1 products and taking them from concept through launch and iteration.Experience building products involving legal, financial, compliance, or other complex and high-trust workflows.Experience building AI-powered product experiences or platforms that safely automate consequential user tasks.Experience with Ruby, and/or TypeScript. We care more about strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to learn than expertise in a particular language or framework.