Staff Engineer - Kafka Specialist

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy.

We operate a global, two-sided network at scale that connects hundreds of millions of merchants and consumers. We help merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online or in person. PayPal is more than a connection to third-party payment networks. We provide proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on our platform on behalf of our customers.

We offer our customers the flexibility to use their accounts to purchase and receive payments for goods and services, as well as the ability to transfer and withdraw funds. We enable consumers to exchange funds more safely with merchants using a variety of funding sources, which may include a bank account, a PayPal or Venmo account balance, PayPal and Venmo branded credit products, a credit card, a debit card, certain cryptocurrencies, or other stored value products such as gift cards, and eligible credit card rewards. Our PayPal, Venmo, and Xoom products also make it safer and simpler for friends and family to transfer funds to each other. We offer merchants an end-to-end payments solution that provides authorization and settlement capabilities, as well as instant access to funds and payouts. We also help merchants connect with their customers, process exchanges and returns, and manage risk. We enable consumers to engage in cross‑border shopping and merchants to extend their global reach while reducing the complexity and friction involved in enabling cross‑border trade.

Our beliefs are the foundation for how we conduct business every day. We live each day guided by our core values of Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness. Together, our values ensure that we work together as one global team with our customers at the center of everything we do – and they push us to ensure we take care of ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Job Summary

The Venmo Data Infrastructure team supports Venmo's internal and customer‑impacting data movement and message streaming infrastructure. We are actively engaged in partnering with development groups, platform, and infrastructure teams — providing deep subject matter expertise on Kafka‑based streaming architecture, and acting as the escalation point for analyzing and resolving complex, large‑scale streaming and performance issues.

Essential Responsibilities

• Implements tasks within the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), receiving structure and oversight from more experienced staff
• Follows well-established internal conventions and standard procedures
• Understands internal standards & processes and applies them to make technical decisions
• Collaborates with peers, manager, and project lead to gain understanding of tasks and review solutions
• May contribute to code & design reviews

Expected Qualifications

• 1+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications

Job Summary

This is a senior technical leadership role for an engineer who will serve as the Kafka subject matter expert and technical authority for Venmo's real‑time data and message streaming platform. You will act as a project or system lead, setting technical direction for other engineers, driving Kafka architecture and operational excellence at scale, and representing the team's engineering standards both internally and externally. This role goes beyond hands‑on Kafka operations — it requires shaping how the broader organization designs, scales, and reasons about streaming infrastructure.

What You'll Do

• Own the technical roadmap and architecture for Venmo's Kafka streaming platform, ensuring it is secure, scalable, reliable, and performant for Venmo product, analytics, and downstream infrastructure teams
• Set the technical direction and design patterns for Kafka cluster architecture, topic design, partitioning strategy, and multi‑tenant governance across the organization
• Lead the design and rollout of Kafka lifecycle management, including cluster upgrades, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and multi‑region/multi‑cluster replication strategies
• Drive deep root‑cause analysis and resolution for the most complex, large‑scale Kafka performance, reliability, and data‑loss incidents
• Define and evangelize best practices for producer/consumer design, schema governance, and Kafka Connect/Kafka Streams usage across engineering teams
• Establish and improve engineering standards, runbooks, and operational rigor for streaming infrastructure in partnership with management
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to senior and junior engineers working on Kafka and adjacent streaming/data infrastructure
• Partner with Executive, Product, Engineering, and Analytics stakeholders to translate business needs into scalable streaming architecture decisions

What We're Looking For

• Bachelor's and/or Master's in Computer Science or related field of study
• Deep, hands‑on expertise operating and scaling Apache Kafka in production at high throughput/high availability, including internals such as partitions, replication, ISR, controller quorum/KRaft, and consumer group rebalancing
• Proven experience architecting Kafka topologies for multi‑region resilience, disaster recovery, and zero/low‑downtime upgrades
• Strong experience securing Kafka with IAM‑based authentication/authorization (e.g., AWS IAM/MSK IAM), including fine‑grained IAM policy design for producers/consumers
• Experience with Schema Registry, schema governance, and Kafka Connect/Kafka Streams patterns
• Hands‑on experience with IaaS and PaaS solutions from AWS (or similar cloud provider), including:
  • Infrastructure as code (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation)
  • Programming and scripting (Python, Java, Lambda)
• Hands‑on experience with related big data infrastructure - AWS S3, AWS DMS, AWS EKS, Apache Spark, AWS Glue - and how they integrate with a streaming backbone
• Track record of leading technical initiatives end‑to‑end and influencing engineering standards across teams, not just within one system
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex Kafka/streaming trade‑offs to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, including leadership
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and raise the technical bar of a team
• AWS Solutions Architect certification or Confluent Kafka certification is a plus

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree, OR any equivalent combination of education and experience

Subsidiary: PayPal

Travel Percent: 0 -

The base pay for this role will depend on where you work and the relevant experience and expertise you bring. The expected range of pay for this role by location is:

Primary Location | Pay Range

San Jose, California: ($176,500.00 - $262,350.00 Annually)

Additional Location(s) | Pay Range

Austin, Texas: ($160,500.00 - $238,700.00 Annually)

Additional compensation for this role may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable.

For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in‑person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations.

Our Benefits

At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice‑based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most. We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at View email address on click.appcast.io.

Belonging at PayPal

Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates.