Staff Engineer

Summary

Join PayJunction as a Staff Engineer and lead the design and implementation of highly available payment solutions. You will utilize agile development, mentor teammates, and improve team collaboration. This Flex First role allows for remote work or working from the Santa Barbara office. Responsibilities include owning project backlogs, leading technical discussions, developing architectural documentation, ensuring compliance, and mentoring engineers. The ideal candidate possesses extensive Java development experience, payment industry expertise, and strong leadership skills. PayJunction offers a comprehensive benefits package including health insurance, retirement benefits, paid time off, and professional development opportunities.

Requirements

• BS/BA in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a relevant field (Highly Preferred)
• Certificate or technical trade school experience with equivalent industry experience
• 8+ years of professional experience developing and deploying payment services in Java
• Experience with Java frameworks (Jetty preferred, Jakarta/Java EE preferred)
• Proficiency in unit testing to ensure code reliability
• 5+ years of development experience in the payment industry
• Experience working at a Payment Gateway or Processor (e.g., Tsys, Adyen, Stripe, Square, Fiserv) implementing transaction handling (authorizations, settlements, chargebacks, refunds, dispute handling)
• Knowledge of Card Networks & Banking Rails (Visa, Mastercard, ACH, SEPA, RTP, SWIFT)
• Expertise in risk & fraud detection, including machine learning models, anomaly detection, and chargeback prevention
• Compliance with PCI DSS, SOC2, and NIST security standards
• Experience with ISO 8583 messaging and EMV (chip-based transaction security)
• Knowledge of 3D Secure (3DS 2.0/2.2), Tokenization, and secure card storage & processing
• Understanding of encryption, OAuth, JWT, AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and KYC (Know Your Customer)
• 5+ years of experience designing reliable, highly available, and fault-tolerant payment platforms
• Ability to balance security, performance, and usability trade-offs in decision-making
• 5+ years of experience working with relational databases (MySQL, H2)
• Strong knowledge of Unix/Linux environments (Ubuntu, Mac)
• Proficiency in observability & monitoring tools (Splunk, Grafana, Prometheus)
• 5+ years of experience leading teams and mentoring engineers
• Proficiency in Agile development with Scrum, conducting code reviews, and guiding mid-level & junior engineers
• Experience integrating with third-party applications using publicly documented APIs and libraries
• Strong understanding of unit testing frameworks (Jasmine, JUnit)

Responsibilities

• Own and manage project backlogs, status tracking, and reporting for multi-quarter payments initiatives, ensuring transparency and accountability. Partner with finance, compliance, and customer support teams to ensure accurate reconciliation, auditability, and operational readiness for new payment features
• Lead technical discussions and decision-making for Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), ensuring alignment with stakeholders and documenting key architectural choices
• Develop detailed architectural documentation, outlining implementation plans and alternative approaches. Create and refine a technical payments roadmap ensuring the team regularly invests in maintenance
• Ensure compliance with payment standards and complete certifications with payment processors
• Break down complex projects into well-defined tasks, delegating effectively to empower and develop the team
• Write and refine well-groomed technical tickets, ensuring clarity and feasibility for implementation
• Produce clear, accurate, and concise customer-facing documentation to support external users
• Drive agile development processes by delivering high-quality work, regularly communicating project status, and meeting timeline expectations
• Follow stringent testing, quality assurance standards and ensure compliance with relevant legal and industry standards (OWASP, PCI DSS, GDPR, etc.)
• Define and monitor key reliability metrics (latency, success rate, error rates), drive observability efforts (logs, traces, alerts), and lead root cause analysis for production incidents
• Ensure steady project progress by proactively checking in with engineers, timely review of code with detailed feedback, and keeping tickets moving forward
• Unblock technical challenges for both yourself and teammates, ensuring progress without unnecessary bottlenecks
• Delegate effectively while maintaining focus on high-priority, complex engineering efforts
• Mentor engineers through design, code, and demo reviews, offering guidance to overcome technical challenges

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision paid 100% by company for you and your dependents
• 401k with 6% match
• FSA and Dependent Care FSA
• Long-term & short-term disability coverage for you paid 100% by company
• 8 paid company holidays per year
• 2 paid floating holidays per year
• 1 paid volunteer day per year
• Annual learning stipend
• Home office equipment stipend
• Quarterly “fun budgets” for team bonding events
• Opportunity to be part of a company that is changing a whole industry
• Opportunity for growth within the company
• Opportunity for remote, in-office, or hybrid work