Senior Staff Engineer, Core Infrastructure

Who we are

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.

At Stripe, we create infrastructure and tools that drive global economic and technological progress. We're committed to the long haul, and our vision is guided by five key objectives:

• Grow Internet-Enabled Commerce: We design APIs, products, and infrastructure that expand the internet economy, empowering businesses everywhere.
• Empower Upstarts: By simplifying operations for new companies and leveling the playing field, we enable more startups to launch and compete effectively against established players.
• Accelerate Globalization: The internet dissolves physical boundaries. We believe anyone, whether in Niger or New York, should have equal opportunities to start a business and access services seamlessly.
• Encourage Better Products: Our goal isn't just more commerce; we aim to elevate the quality of products and services. We focus on how Stripe is utilized, striving to be a catalyst for innovation.
• Advance Developer Tools and Infrastructure: The way Stripe’s services are built and deployed is crucial. Millions of businesses, from major enterprises to ambitious startups, rely on Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and unlock new opportunities. We provide best-in-class infrastructure and tools to support their success.

We have an immense amount of work ahead! At Stripe, you have a unique opportunity to make the global economy accessible to everyone while doing the most impactful work of your career!

About the team

The Infrastructure team at Stripe is responsible for core capabilities that empower all Stripe product teams to deliver exceptional services. We define and drive the vision for our platform, aiming for optimal durability, scale, and availability while carefully balancing cost and recovery time. With a scale growth of 50-60% YoY, we maintain Stripe’s six nines of availability, all while ensuring efficiency and reducing the operational load of our teams.

At Stripe, we leverage a range of cutting-edge technologies to deliver exceptional deployment and scalability worldwide. Our Compute teams utilize Linux OS, Kubernetes, and advanced cloud computing, while our Storage teams manage one of the largest non-relational and relational storage systems, crucial to all data flows at Stripe. Our Networking teams have effectively shielded Stripe from numerous large-scale DDoS attacks and improved latency for both internal systems and our partners. We are dedicated to continuously developing new distributed infrastructure capabilities and scaling existing technologies. By maintaining strong ties to the open-source community, we ensure that we stay at the forefront of infrastructure innovation. Through collaboration with teams within Stripe and across the industry and the open-source community, we aim to advance the state of the art in durable, reliable, scalable, efficient, and automated infrastructure.

What you’ll do

As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in defining and driving the evolution of Stripe’s Core Infrastructure. Your expertise and influence will empower our teams and the business to scale effectively while achieving an exceptional price/performance ratio. You’ll collaborate with engineers across the company to design and build large-scale capabilities, all while enhancing our internal engineering standards, tooling, and processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, planning, construction, and maintenance of Compute, Storage, and Networking systems utilized throughout Stripe.  
• Facilitate technical discussions and decision-making across Core Infrastructure, various Infrastructure teams, and Stripe's platform and product teams.  
• Mentor and cultivate the next generation of technical leaders at Stripe.  
• Influence and participate in roadmap planning and prioritization.  
• Debug production issues across services and various levels of the stack.  
• Focus on scaling and automating infrastructure services.  
• Spearhead initiatives to enhance reliability and observability.  
• Collaborate with the leadership team to identify current and future infrastructure needs across Stripe, understand specific requirements, and prioritize both short-term and long-term solutions.

Who you are

We’re looking for someone with a strong background in compute and/or storage/databases and/or networking cloud infrastructure who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

Minimum requirements

• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related field.
• 15+ years of professional experience in a software development or DevOps automation role.
• A strong engineering background in distributed infrastructure and/or platform services, including one or more of the following: storage, databases, compute, networking.
• Experience leading projects on a cross-team and company-wide scale.
• Experience optimizing the reliability and security of distributed systems.
• Experience scaling and migrating systems with little to no downtime.
• Experience mentoring engineers at various stages in their careers.
• Experience developing, maintaining, and debugging distributed systems.
• Experience driving a culture of operational excellence, with a deep understanding of metrics, alerts, and dashboards.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in a development team in AWS/Azure/OCI/Google
• Experience with AWS network components (VPC, security groups, DNS Route 53, NLB, gateways, etc.)
• Experience with databases (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, MySQL)
• Experience with Kubernetes
• Experience with Terraform