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Staff Data Engineer

PayPal

PayPal

Software Engineering, Data Science
Tennessee, USA
Posted on Dec 19, 2025

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 will design and implement data systems to support business needs. You will work with stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver solutions. Your role involves driving best practices in data engineering, ensuring data quality, and mentoring junior engineers.

Job Description:

Essential Responsibilities:

  • Lead and manage data engineering projects, ensuring timely delivery and alignment with business goals.
  • Develop and maintain data architectures and pipelines to support data analysis and decision-making.
  • Analyze complex datasets to identify trends, patterns, and insights that drive strategic initiatives.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data needs and provide actionable insights.
  • Ensure data quality and integrity through regular audits and validation processes.
  • Mentor and guide junior data engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

Expected Qualifications:

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

Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:

Position Responsibilities:

  • Must be a self-starter, work independently or as a team member. Proactively remove obstacles to ensure timely delivery of product and goals
  • Write clean and solid code that scales over PB of data and enforce engineering excellence in the organization
  • Improve data management efficiency through AI capabilities, better process and best practices
  • Embed Privacy-by-Design principles into all data solutions and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
  • Provide expertise across the data product development lifecycle—spanning data engineering, architecture, and analytics—to design and deliver reusable, accessible, and high-quality data solutions.
  • Design data structures and taxonomies that support standardization, integration, and alignment with business processes.
  • Deliver technical leadership through analytical thinking, innovation, and detailed specifications.
  • Drive data product execution and adoption through a metrics-based approach
  • Define and communicate data strategy for credit products, aligned with PayPal’s technical direction, evolving credit strategies, and the external data ecosystem
  • Strong product sense to identify data challenges and opportunities, and assess the impact of data-driven solutions
  • Leverage enterprise frameworks, governance tools, and reusable architecture patterns for Credit Risk and cross organizations
  • Foster influential cross-functional relationships through collaboration, proactive planning, and decisive leadership to design scalable solutions across platforms and products.

Technical Leadership Qualities:

  • Strong collaboration skills and ability to influence across all organizations and levels within the company
  • Ability to communicate clearly and succinctly to all levels within the organization- translating the organizations goals into execution plans & metrics
  • Possess the ability to connect, engage and lead with empathy
  • Motivate others through a shared vision and confidence that empowers employees and teams to perform at their best
  • Demonstrate ability to delegate work
  • Operate with transparency and honesty in all interactions

Qualifications

  • 12+ years of experience in enterprise data management, with deep expertise across disciplines including data governance, data architecture, and more.
  • Experience with data management and governance tools and technologies
  • Experience with enabling data products within large organizations
  • Proven experience independently developing and implementing recommended approaches to complex/ambiguous problems while making thoughtful trade-offs
  • Deep understanding and hands-on experience in data platforms
  • Strong technical acumen, being able to quickly understand technical details of a product or platform
  • Strong execution skills-ability to deliver results
  • Excellent verbal and written communication and collaboration skills to effectively communicate across diverse groups within PayPal
  • Comfortable working in a fast-paced, results-oriented environment
  • Shows initiative and exhibits a “can-do” attitude
  • Demonstrated willingness to be flexible and adaptable to changing priorities with the ability to motivate in a cross-functional organization
  • Able to see the “big picture”-the end-to-end connection points associated with data and systems
  • Exhibit a passion for Data Management and Analytics
  • Strong business acumen and interest to deeply understand PayPal’s credit use cases, data producers and data consumers’ needs/pain points

Bonus Qualifications

  • Familiarity with AI/ML pipelines or AI-enhanced data systems (data discovery, data quality monitoring, or integrating ML into ETL flows)
  • Passion for bridging the gap between data engineering and machine learning engineering.
  • Experience enabling ML/AI workloads, such as building feature stores, training data pipelines, or model monitoring infrastructure.
  • Experience in financial services, with a strong preference for exposure to the credit risk domain.

Education:

  • BS or advanced degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical field.

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

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 paypalglobaltalentacquisition@paypal.com.

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.