Sr Software Engineer, Ruby on Rails

The Company

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:

This job delivers complete solutions spanning all phases of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). It involves advising management on project-level issues, guiding junior engineers, operating with little supervision, and applying knowledge of technical best practices.

Job Description:

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

Expected Qualifications:

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

In your day-to-day role you will work on designing and building solutions for enterprise merchants with the objective of helping streamline onboarding, increase authorization rates, reduce costs, reduce fraud, and drive conversion. 

We practice test-driven development and strongly encourage a culture of pair programming. Developers test, release, and monitor their own code. 

We keep the team coordinated with daily stand-ups and have regular retrospectives to inspect and adapt our working model and processes to increase quality and effectiveness. 

We value unique perspectives brought by diverse backgrounds and experiences. A broad range of ideas and perspectives help us to create the best possible product. 

What we look for in you: 

• Minimum of 3 years of relevant work experience and a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. 

• Track record in designing and writing understandable, testable, and easy-to-maintain software. 

• Ability and desire to work in our collaborative environment: open team room, pair programming and fluid interactions with all products and operations teams. 

• High interest in Test Driven Development and specific experiences using a test heavy approach to solve problems and create solutions. 

Platform Reliability & Observability  

• Implement and enhance observability frameworks including logging, tracing, metrics, and alerting using Splunk, Datadog, Sentry, and PagerDuty.  

• Collaborate with SRE and cloud teams to design and maintain high-availability architectures across AWS and GCP.  

• Lead Incident and Problem Management practices — ensuring rapid detection, efficient triage, root cause analysis, and long-term remediation.  

• Define and maintain SLIs/SLOs, build dashboards, and automate monitoring and alerting workflows.  

• Contribute to on-call rotations and ensure incident response readiness across critical systems.  

  

Core Development & Feature Delivery  

• Design, build, and optimize backend services and APIs using Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL data systems.  

• Leverage PostgreSQL and GCP BigQuery for performance tuning, analytics, and data consistency across transactional systems.  

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable payment solutions.  

• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and technical planning to drive excellence in system architecture and development.  

• Build automation, integration pipelines, and scalable components leveraging AWS/GCP cloud services.  

  

Required Skills  

• Solid backend or platform engineering experience in high-availability, transaction-heavy, or FinTech environments.  

• Experience with Ruby on Rails for building backend APIs and services.  

• Solid SQL development skills with PostgreSQL and GCP BigQuery.  

• Strong proficiency with AWS and GCP Cloud infrastructure and services.  

• Hands-on expertise in observability tools: Splunk, DataDog, PagerDuty.  

• Proven experience in Incident Management and Problem Management from detection to post-incident review.  

• Excellent troubleshooting, analytical, and collaboration skills across distributed systems.  

  

Bonus / Preferred Skills  

• Understanding of Network OSI model, SQS, Kafka, Data Replication, and API integrations.  

• Experience designing scalable architectures in AWS.  

• Exposure to AI/ML, particularly LLM (Large Language Model) integrations.  

• ITIL v4 Certification or demonstrated familiarity with IT service management best practices.  

  

Why Join Us  

• Be part of a high-impact engineering team modernizing and scaling a critical FinTech platform.  

• Shape the future of our observability and reliability ecosystem, setting standards across the organization.  

• Work in a culture that values technical excellence, ownership, pair programming, and continuous improvement.  

• Competitive compensation, flexible hybrid work model, and real opportunities for career growth across platform and product domains. 

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 | ($143,500.00 - $212,850.00 Annually)

Additional Location(s) | Pay Range:

Chicago, Illinois | ($130,500.00 - $193,600.00 Annually) Additional compensation for this role may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable. This role is also eligible for a range of benefits which may include, medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance, parental and family leave, 401(k) savings plan, paid time off, and other benefits. For more information visit https://www.paypalbenefits.com.

PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us.

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 benefits to help you thrive in every stage of life. We champion your financial, physical, and mental health by offering valuable benefits and resources to help you care for the whole you.

We have great benefits including a flexible work environment, employee shares options, health and life insurance and more. To learn more about our benefits please visit https://www.paypalbenefits.com.

Who We Are:

Click Here to learn more about our culture and community.

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 [email protected].

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.

Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community.

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.