Company Description Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.
At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale - tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world. Join Visa and do work that matters - to you, to your community, and to the world.
Progress starts with you.
Job Description As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be part of our Issuing Solutions Development team, helping to design, enhance, and build our next-generation transaction service platform. The successful candidate will collaborate with the team to architect and develop REST-based APIs and perform comprehensive unit and integration testing on newly created components. You will also assist in troubleshooting and resolving defects throughout the software development lifecycle.
In this role, you will work closely with Development, Product Management, Project Management, and Quality Assurance teams, requiring strong communication skills and the ability to engage effectively with partners at all levels. Self-direction and ownership are essential, as is the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment that continuously adopts modern technologies, tools, and engineering best practices.
Additionally, you will contribute to improving development processes, support performance and scalability initiatives, and help mentor junior engineers as needed. This is an excellent opportunity to influence key technical decisions and play a critical role in delivering reliable, high-quality financial technology solutions.
Essential Functions:
- Architect, design, and develop API-based backend applications in Java, leveraging the Spring ecosystem to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performing services.
- Lead the design, development, documentation, and implementation of new features, and drive enhancements, optimizations, and defect resolutions for existing software systems.
- Champion TDD/BDD practices, creating comprehensive unit tests and guiding teams in adopting high-quality, test-first engineering standards.
- Create and maintain high-quality technical documentation, including system designs, API specifications, operational procedures, and deployment workflows.
- Collaborate and influence across global and cross-functional teams, providing technical leadership on architecture, implementation strategies, and production support issues.
- Partner with Quality Assurance teams to define testing strategies, triage complex defects, and ensure high-confidence delivery of software releases.
- Provide technical leadership during development and testing phases, ensuring secure, stable, and performant delivery of mission-critical applications.
- Act as a senior contributor within the engineering team, working closely with product stakeholders, architects, QA, and management to align solutions with business and technical goals.
- Identify strategic opportunities to improve engineering standards, development processes, and system performance, and drive adoption across teams.
- Prepare and review design documents, evaluate solution alternatives, and make architectural recommendations aligned with enterprise standards and long-term scalability.
- Actively participate in Agile ceremonies, including stand-ups, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives, and guide the team in following Agile best practices.
- Lead by example, demonstrating ownership and accountability, mentoring junior and mid-level engineers, and contributing to the evolution of departmental best practices and engineering guidelines.
This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.
Visa will accept applications for this role until at least January 19, 2026.
Qualifications Basic Qualifications:
5+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or at least 2 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 0 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 8+ years of relevant work experience.
Preferred Qualifications:
Proven expertise architecting and developing real-time, multithreaded Java systems that are fault-tolerant, highly scalable, and capable of handling mission-critical, high-volume transaction throughput.
Deep mastery of distributed systems architecture, including high availability, low-latency processing, data consistency models, and event-driven design.
Strong command of SOA principles and Web Services technologies, including REST and SOAP, with experience establishing service contracts and API governance.
Advanced experience with backend platforms and frameworks, including J2EE, JDBC, JMS, Spring, Hibernate, JMX, and MBeans, with the ability to guide best practices across teams.
Expert-level knowledge of Agile engineering practices, including TDD, CI/CD, and DevOps tooling such as Git, Maven, Jenkins, Chef, Sonar, JUnit, and mock frameworks.
Hands-on experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, including performance optimization and schema design for large datasets.
Contributions to open-source GenAI/Agentic AI projects.
Demonstrated experience with Agentic AI systems, such as autonomous agents, tool-using LLMs, or multi-agent frameworks
Exposure in Python and leading AI/ML frameworks
Exceptional problem-solving abilities and a strong passion for advancing new AI paradigms and scalable intelligent system architectures.
Demonstrated ability to lead architecture efforts for enterprise-scale, distributed backend systems, influencing technical direction across multiple teams or domains.
Strong OO design expertise and deep understanding of design patterns, with the ability to mentor engineers on scalable, maintainable design principles.
Excellent communication and cross-functional leadership skills, including the ability to present complex technical concepts to engineering leaders, product partners, and stakeholders.
Experience with container-based application deployment, including Docker, Kubernetes, or other application container technologies.
Fluent in developing testable, maintainable code, including extensive experience with mocking frameworks and unit/integration testing patterns.
Experience deploying solutions on virtualized or converged infrastructure environments, with familiarity in cloud or hybrid-cloud architectures.
Experience with payment systems and/or credit card processing is a strong plus, especially in environments requiring PCI compliance and tight SLAs.
Strong expertise in troubleshooting and diagnosing production issues, including JVM tuning, log analysis, thread/heap analysis, and incident response leadership.
Deep experience with performance tuning and memory leak detection, particularly in high-volume, low-latency Java applications.
Experience integrating with third-party Web Services, including handling failure cases, resiliency patterns, and contract validation.
Skills You Bring:
Growth Mindset and Technical Curiosity: A passion for exploring emerging technologies, solving complex engineering problems, and driving innovation at global scale.
Innovation and Boundary-Pushing: Ability to challenge the status quo, think creatively, and develop solutions that go beyond conventional approaches.
Strong Language Proficiency: Deep expertise in one or more modern programming languages (e.g., Java), with the ability to guide best practices across teams.
Proven Builder Mentality: Extensive experience architecting, building, and deploying modern, scalable backend services and web applications with a strong emphasis on quality, reliability, and performance.
Continuous Learner: Commitment to staying current with evolving tools and platforms-such as Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud-native technologies-and applying them where appropriate.
Collaborative Partner: Demonstrated success working closely with Product, QA, DevOps, Architecture, and Agile/Scrum teams to deliver high-impact solutions and drive alignment across stakeholders.
Visa will accept applications for this role until at least January 30, 2026. If this is posted we are still accepting applications.
Additional Information Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.
Travel Requirements: This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.
Mental/Physical Requirements: This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.
Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.
Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.
U.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated salary range for this position is 124,300.00 to 198,600.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity. Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401 (k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program. 
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