Staff Software Engineer, Link

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. About the team Link helps Stripe's merchants deliver frictionless and secure checkout experiences by auto-filling customers' payment information, letting customers check out in seconds and pay in one click across the Link merchant network. The Link Balance team is building on top of that network to transform Link from a one-click checkout into a global consumer financial platform. Link Balance lets consumers hold, spend, earn rewards on, and off-ramp digital dollars—stored as stablecoins, powered by Bridge and Privy, and distributed through Stripe's network of hundreds of millions of consumers. We're bringing the borderless, programmable, and instant utility of digital dollars into everyday use. What you'll do We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to lead the design and delivery of new money-movement capabilities in Link. You will take ambiguous product opportunities and turn them into reliable, scalable, and intuitive experiences for consumers and merchants. This is a hands-on individual-contributor role with broad technical and organizational scope. You will own large, cross-functional projects from early product and technical definition through launch and iteration; lead teams of engineers through complex execution; and partner closely with the many Stripe systems and teams that make money movement possible. You will work across the stack, building services and APIs as well as the user experiences that expose those capabilities. The work may involve modern financial infrastructure—including stablecoin-enabled capabilities—while requiring sound judgment around safety, reliability, compliance, and user trust. You will make the architectural decisions that let the balance model scale globally, and raise the engineering bar for the team as we grow. Responsibilities • Lead the technical strategy, architecture, and execution for large, ambiguous Link initiatives that create new money-movement primitives. • Own projects end to end: clarify the problem, define an incremental technical plan, align stakeholders, drive delivery, launch safely, and use results to guide further investment. • Build robust, scalable backend services and high-quality consumer-facing experiences across Java, Ruby, and TypeScript. • Lead a project team of engineers through execution, creating clarity on priorities, decisions, risks, and delivery milestones. • Partner with Product, Design, Data Science, Risk, Infrastructure, and other Stripe teams to build capabilities that are safe, reliable, and useful. • Navigate dependencies across Stripe’s payments and money-movement platforms, making thoughtful tradeoffs between speed, user experience, operational reliability, and durable technical foundations. • Raise the engineering bar through technical leadership, design reviews, mentoring, and constructive feedback across the team. • Help shape the team’s longer-term roadmap by identifying opportunities, technical risks, and investments needed to scale Link’s financial capabilities globally. Who you are We're looking for someone 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 • 8+ years of backend and/or full-stack software development experience, with a track record of owning large, ambiguous systems end-to-end. • Demonstrated technical experience leading the design and delivery of large, complex software projects from early definition through production launch. • Strong full-stack engineering skills, including experience building reliable backend services and polished user-facing product experiences. • Experience leading and unblocking a group of engineers on a substantial project as a senior individual contributor. • Ability to operate effectively in high-ambiguity environments: framing problems, making durable technical decisions, and creating an actionable path forward. • Excellent cross-functional and cross-organizational collaboration skills, with the ability to align teams with different systems, priorities, and constraints. • Strong engineering judgment around system reliability, operational excellence, security, and maintainability. • A product-minded approach to engineering, with a focus on delivering meaningful outcomes for users and the business. Preferred qualifications • Experience with Java, Ruby, and/or TypeScript. We care more about strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to learn than expertise in a particular language or framework. • Experience building payments, money-movement, fintech, or other regulated financial products. • Experience building consumer products at scale, particularly products that require a high degree of user trust. • Experience working on 0→1 products or taking new capabilities from concept through launch and iteration. • Familiarity with stablecoins, digital assets, or the infrastructure that enables global financial products. • Appreciation for the importance of good documentation—internal and external—and taking pride in seeing projects through to successful completion