Lead Software Engineer
$173,100–$276,800 year
HybridBellevue, Washington, United States
Job Summary
Design and build scalable, secure, and resilient software systems for Visa's Acceptance Solutions transaction processing platform, leading architecture, design, development, and modernization of mission-critical solutions. Set technical direction and influence architectural standards for distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, and event-driven processing while driving hands-on development and code reviews. Mentor senior engineers, promote engineering excellence, and guide the adoption of AI-enabled practices and secure integration patterns across teams. Support agile delivery, release readiness, and on-call rotations, utilizing production telemetry to recommend improvements to platform reliability and operational workflows. Partner with product, security, and operations stakeholders to align technical solutions with business objectives. Requires 10+ years of experience, 3 days in-office presence, and 5-10% travel.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or at least 7 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 4 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience
- Visa requires at least 3 days in office
- Travel 5-10% of the time
- 15+ years of experience with progressive technical leadership responsibilities
- Demonstrated track record as a technical leader with organization-wide impact
- Deep expertise in designing and scaling mission-critical distributed systems
- Proven ability to solve complex problems that span multiple technical domains
- Experience setting technical direction and influencing strategy across teams
- Expert proficiency in modern programming languages and system design
- Mastery of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), Kubernetes, and distributed architecture
- Deep experience with event-driven systems, Kafka, and high-throughput data processing
- Experience with security architecture (OAuth 2.0, JWT, mTLS, encryption, IAM)
- Track record of mentoring senior engineers and developing technical leaders
- Experience pioneering AI-enabled engineering practices at organizational scale
- Deep understanding of payment processing and transaction lifecycle
- Expertise in event-driven architecture and event streaming platforms (Kafka)
- Knowledge of payment capture processing and event enrichment
- Experience with file transfer protocols (SFTP) and batch processing
- Experience in payments, financial services, or high-scale transaction processing
- Recognized expertise in distributed systems (publications, speaking engagements, patents)
- Experience with AI/ML at scale, including production deployment of intelligent systems
- Track record of building and evolving platforms serving billions of transactions
- Experience working with executive leadership on technical strategy
- History of developing engineers who have grown into senior technical roles
- Experience with PCI-DSS, SOX, and financial services regulatory compliance
- Understanding of payment network protocols (Visa, Mastercard, Amex)
- Experience with event correlation and transaction matching
- Knowledge of retry mechanisms, dead-letter queues, and event replay
- Experience with data serialization formats (Avro, Protobuf, JSON)
- Understanding of exactly-once processing and idempotency patterns
Desired Qualifications
- 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD
- Experience with security architecture (OAuth 2.0, JWT, mTLS, encryption, IAM)
- Experience pioneering AI-enabled engineering practices at organizational scale
- Deep understanding of payment processing and transaction lifecycle
- Expertise in event-driven architecture and event streaming platforms (Kafka)
- Knowledge of payment capture processing and event enrichment
- Experience with file transfer protocols (SFTP) and batch processing
- Experience in payments, financial services, or high-scale transaction processing
- Recognized expertise in distributed systems (publications, speaking engagements, patents)
- Experience with AI/ML at scale, including production deployment of intelligent systems
- Track record of building and evolving platforms serving billions of transactions
- Experience working with executive leadership on technical strategy
- History of developing engineers who have grown into senior technical roles
- Experience with PCI-DSS, SOX, and financial services regulatory compliance
- Understanding of payment network protocols (Visa, Mastercard, Amex)
- Experience with event correlation and transaction matching
- Knowledge of retry mechanisms, dead-letter queues, and event replay
- Experience with data serialization formats (Avro, Protobuf, JSON)
- Understanding of exactly-once processing and idempotency patterns
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