Staff Software Engineer, Stripe

• We’re looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role
• This is a Staff-level role - that typically means 10+ years of experience building, operating, and evolving large-scale production systems
• Experience as a technical lead for team(s) working on distributed systems, including scaling them in fast-moving environments
• Hands-on experience with big data technologies such as Kafka, Pulsar, Flink, or Pinot
• Comfortable operating with high autonomy and ownership
• Growth mindset and a willingness to learn quickly, explore ambiguous problem spaces, and dive deep when needed
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical documentation

Desirable

• You’ll partner with other infrastructure engineers, leaders on adjacent teams, as well as product engineers and managers who depend on our platform to define and deliver the next generation of Stripe’s streaming infrastructure
• You’ll help set a long-term technical direction that scales with Stripe’s growth while enabling reliable, efficient operations for years to come
• Design, build, and operate event-driven infrastructure, leveraging technologies like Apache Kafka, Temporal, and AWS services
• Collaborate with teams across Stripe to understand their requirements, unblock adoption, and identify opportunities to improve how streaming infrastructure is used
• Define and implement Kafka operational best practices—such as shuffle sharding, cellular architecture, and load shedding—to improve resilience and reliability at scale
• Drive a shift from “pets” to “cattle”: build automation, standardized workflows, and self-healing systems that reduce manual operations