PayPal Staff Software Engineer - SDK 

United States, California, San Jose 

223911704

This job acts as a project leader, coordinating the activities of other engineers, determining technical tasks, and improving existing structures and processes. It involves making technical decisions, collaborating with management to set standards, and representing the company to external partners.Essential Responsibilities:Delivers complete solutions spanning all phases of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) (design, implementation, testing, delivery and operations), based on definitions from more senior roles.
Advises immediate management on project-level issues
Guides junior engineers
Operates with little day-to-day supervision, making technical decisions based on knowledge of internal conventions and industry best practices
Applies knowledge of technical best practices in making decisions

Essential Responsibilities:

• Acts as a project or system leader, coordinating the activities of other engineers on the project or within the system
• Determines the technical tasks that other engineers will follow
• Actions result in the achievement of customer, operational, program or service objectives
• Proactively improves existing structures & processes
• Exercises judgement in reconciling diverse and competing priorities (time, quality, complexity risk) to identify optimal solutions to problems
• Notices patterns and condenses repetition into densely meaningful generalized solutions
• Collaborates with management to set/improve standards for engineering rigor
• Trusted to represent PayPal, Inc to the outside world via interactions with partners, customers, or industry organizations

Expected Qualifications:

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

Your day-to-day:

• Personally contribute code across the full technology stack, maintaining a hands-on approach while providing technical leadership
• Lead the technical vision and execution of i18n SDKs and services used by hundreds of PayPal developers globally.
• Collaborate with partner teams to define requirements and deliver developer-friendly solutions that enable scalability, and international readiness across PayPal platforms.
• Architect, design, andimplement Node.jsSDKs andmicroservices witha focus on robustness, performance, and developer usability.
• Drive adoption of best practices for internalization and localization across engineering teams.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers, sharing your expertise to foster their growth and enhance the team’s technical capabilities.
• Proactively identify and address technical debt, creating a roadmap for its resolution to maintain a clean and efficient codebase.
• Contribute to cloud adoptionefforts (AWS/GCP),designing for scalability, reliability, and security in a multi-cloud environment.
• Explore and evaluate the use of AI-powered tools to optimize developer productivity, internationalization processes, and SDK usability.
• Represent the Internalization Engineering team in cross-org architecture forums and provide guidance on internationalization strategies.
• Champion best practices in software engineering, advocating for approaches that improve quality, scalability, andmaintainability.
• Effective communication, listening, interpersonal, influencing, and alignment driving skills; able to convey important messages in a clear and compelling manner.

What you need to bring:

• 10+ years of experience in professional software development, with significant experience in building and scaling services or SDKs.
• Experience acting as a tech lead for full-stack components, services, with a focus on both front-end and back-end architecture.
• Strong proficiencyin Node.js/React.JS andJavaScript/TypeScriptecosystem; understanding of SDK/API design principles.
• Deep knowledgeof internationalizationand localization engineering practices, including Unicode, CLDR etc.
• Proven experience architecting cloud services (AWS, GCP, or both).
• A track record of technical leadership, mentoring, and influencing decisions in large-scale engineering organizations.
• Strong understanding of developer experience, usability, and ease-of-integration when building SDKs or frameworks.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines such as Harness, testing strategies, and quality metrics for SDKs/services.
• Strategic mindset with interest in applying AI and automation tools to improve internalization and developer efficiency.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to operate in a globally distributed, fast-paced environment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present complex technical information in a clear and concise manner to a variety of audiences.

Nice to have:

• Experiencewith open-sourceSDK development and contribution to widely adopted libraries.
• Background in building developer platforms or frameworks with internal customer focus.
• Hands-on experience integrating AI models or ML-based services into developer workflows.
• Exposure to multiple programminglanguages beyondNode.js (Python, Java etc.).

Travel Percent:

The total compensation for this practice may include an annual performance bonus (or other incentive compensation, as applicable), equity, and medical, dental, vision, and other benefits. For more information, visit .

The US national annual pay range for this role is $152,500 to $262,350

Our Benefits:

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please