Staff Software Engineer - Featurespace

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

At Visa, we are passionate about making a difference. We lead the way in disrupting fraud from multiple vectors. In this role you will be joining an exciting, innovative business new to the Visa family.

At Featurespace, we are the world leader in Enterprise Financial Crime prevention, using cutting-edge machine learning technology to fight fraud and money laundering. As the inventors of Adaptive Behavioral Analytics and creators of the ARIC™ platform, we are trusted by customers across 180+ countries. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will help shape the future of our SaaS platform, playing a key role in delivering next-generation fraud prevention solutions at scale.

The Opportunity

As a Staff Software Engineer at Featurespace, you will be a key technical leader driving the architecture, scalability, and evolution of our global, multi-tenant SaaS platform. You will shape the future of our systems by setting technical direction, solving the hardest engineering challenges, and influencing teams across the organization.

This is not just a hands-on coding role - it is an opportunity to define technical strategy, mentor senior engineers, and ensure our platform is built to scale securely and reliably as we continue to combat financial crime and deliver innovative solutions worldwide.

If you thrive on solving complex system-level problems, leading through influence, and driving architectural decisions that impact multiple teams, this is your chance to make a lasting impact in a high-growth, startup-style environment.

Role Responsibilities:

• Shape platform architecture and technical strategy by designing scalable, resilient, and secure systems across domains using technologies like React, TypeScript, Node.js, Java SpringBoot, Go and AWS.
• Lead cross-team initiatives that improve the platform’s performance, security, and developer experience, ensuring Featurespace can scale globally.
• Define and uphold engineering best practices across teams, setting standards for architecture, testing, observability, and operational excellence.
• Drive alignment with business strategy by partnering with engineering leadership, product managers, and other stakeholders to influence roadmaps and make long-term architectural investments.
• Mentor and coach senior engineers, serving as a multiplier for technical talent across the organization and helping teams make sound design and implementation decisions.
• Tackle the hardest technical problems, such as scaling our multi-tenant architecture, optimizing cost and performance of cloud infrastructure, and ensuring high availability in production environments.
• Represent engineering in cross-functional discussions, advocating for scalability, security, and maintainability in product planning and execution.
• Take technical ownership for critical parts of the platform, while influencing and supporting other teams that depend on those systems.

This is a hybrid position, with an expectation of 3 days in the office.

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

• 6+ years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 4 or more years of relevant experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or up to 3 years of relevant experience with a PhD

Required experience:

• Proven track record as a Senior Engineer or Staff Software Engineer (or equivalent), with significant experience designing and scaling high-scale SaaS platforms.
• Deep expertise in React, TypeScript, Node.js, Java SpringBoot, Go and AWS technologies, with the ability to set best practices and guide adoption across teams.
• Strong architectural skills in distributed systems, systems design, data structures, and algorithms, with a history of making decisions that balance scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Extensive hands-on experience with cloud-native architectures, including designing for high availability, resilience, and multi-tenant scalability in production environments.
• Leadership in technical strategy and cross-team initiatives, influencing architectural direction beyond a single team and aligning engineering with business goals.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers, shaping technical growth across the org, and fostering a culture of engineering excellence.
• Operational excellence mindset, with deep experience in observability, performance tuning, and ensuring the health of complex distributed systems.
• Commitment to automation and quality, driving adoption of testing practices, CI/CD pipelines, and developer productivity tooling at scale.
• Domain expertise in fraud prevention, risk, or financial technology.
• Hands-on experience with multiple data paradigms - relational and NoSQL databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, DynamoDB), data pipelines, and large-scale storage/processing.
• Experience with advanced cloud-native ecosystems - AWS services (Lambda, ECS, S3, RDS), Kubernetes, and event-driven/microservices architectures.
• Strong understanding of distributed messaging and streaming technologies (Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, etc.) and their role in large-scale platforms.
• Ability to evaluate and introduce new technologies thoughtfully, balancing innovation with long-term maintainability.

Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.

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 a new hire into this position is 117,700.00 to 170,600.00 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.