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Staff Software Engineer - Transaction Engine Foundation Team

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Marqeta is looking for a talented Staff Software Engineer to autonomously deliver ongoing business impact across a team, product capability, or technical system. You will own and deliver bi-annual/annual goals for your team, be an expert at identifying the right solutions to solve ambiguous, open-ended problems that require tough prioritization, and define technical solutions or efficient operational processes that level up your team. You will be a strong leader within your team with your impact beginning to extend outside your team and will increasingly optimize beyond just your team by driving cross-team or cross-discipline initiatives.

You’ll be joining the Transaction Engine Foundation team, who are responsible for the automation, operation and innovation of Marqeta’s card issuing platform. You’ll be able to straddle the application/infrastructure divide, and be right in the heart of our journey from a EC2-based platform to one that is completely running on Kubernetes. This team operates at the center of everything Marqeta does, and there is endless opportunity to make a sizable impact across your team and the whole business.

Learn more about our Product and Engineering team

What you'll do

  • Play a key role in setting medium-to-long term strategy for business-impacting projects.
  • Lead the design of large components and large features.
  • Lead the effort to migrate our transaction processing flagship to Kubernetes, responsible for handling more than 100B in processing volume
  • Bring operational excellence to everything you do and lead by example in this area for the team
  • Autonomously define and deliver technical roadmaps of larger projects, often involving cross-team dependencies. 
  • Actively keep customer needs in mind and leverage input from product stakeholders as available to determine the right technical solutions to deliver customer value quickly,
  • Actively mentor and support the development of less-experienced team members. 
  • Have end to end accountability (not just implementing but you will be the one driving change process and bringing people along).
  • Make technical decisions aligned with longer term needs, not just immediate requirements.
  • Lead without authority and through others. 
  • Raise the engineering bar across the team.
  • Participate in on-call coverage. 

  What we're looking for

  • 8+ years of relevant experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years of experience with a Master's degree; or a PhD with 3 years experience.  In lieu of a degree, 11+ years of relevant experience may suffice.
  • Ability to write clean code that captures the essential nature of the solution and is appropriately flexible, reusable, efficient, and adaptable to changing requirements.
  • Ability to ensure high code quality in code reviews and actively look for scalability and/or resiliency gaps, and security vulnerabilities.
  • Strong awareness of the ecosystem of tools and libraries supporting your primary programming language and development environment and a strong grasp of the idioms and patterns of your language. 
  • Ability to effectively and quickly debug cross-module issues.
  • Ability to create coherent designs with multiple components interacting across API or system boundaries.
  • Capability to roll out a component or major feature (and deprecating an existing system or feature) reliably.
  • Experience developing in Java and/or Python, however we welcome experience in other programming languages.
  • Experience with the automation and operation of large-scale Kubernetes/Docker deployments
  • Experience with relational databases (MySQL, Postgres, MS SQL Server, Oracle, etc.).
  • Production experience with modern engineering and cloud tools.  (We use AWS, but welcome other cloud experience)
  • Ability to build relationships and drive coordination across teams.
  • Ability to present clear and concise messages tailored to various audiences; able to communicate in a clear, concise, and respectful manner both verbally and in writing.
  • Experience making technical trade offs and navigating technical complexities.
  • Experience mentoring other Engineers.

Nice to haves

  • Experience with scaling large, transactional systems and data sharding.
  • Experience with payments or the FinTech space
  • Experience with Microservices
  • Experience with Java Spring Boot
  • Experience in software delivery pipelines, CI/CD systems, and software deployment
  • Contributions to technical blogs, a public Github repo, or to open source projects

Our (typical) process:

  1. Application submission
  2. Recruiter video call
  3. Coding interview
  4. Virtual “Onsite” consisting of three 45-60 minute rounds
  5. Offer!

Compensation and Benefits

Marqeta is a Flex First company which allows you to choose your best working environment, whether that be from home or at a company office. To support Flex First, we calibrate pay to a competitive value according to working location. Compensation is aligned according to three tiers within the United States:

  • National: A baseline tier that applies to most of the geographic territory of the United States.
  • Premium: Slightly elevated from the National tier, and oriented toward a narrower set of higher cost-of-living areas, such as Los Angeles CA and Seattle WA
  • Premium Plus: A tier for the most expensive working areas, like the San Francisco Bay area and New York City.

Visit this page or consult with a Recruiter to determine which tier would be applicable to you.

When determining salaries, we consider several factors including, but not limited to, skills, prior experience, and work location. The new-hire base salary range for this position is:

  • National: $165,300 - $206,600
  • Premium: $179,000 - $223,700
  • Premium Plus: $195,400 - 243,100

We also believe in recognizing the contributions of our people. That's why we award annual bonuses to eligible employees, rewarding both individual performance and the success of the entire company.

Along with monetary compensation, Marqeta offers

  • Multiple health insurance options
  • Flexible time off – take what you need
  • Retirement savings program with company contribution and after tax contributions
  • Equity in a publicly-traded company and an Employee Stock Purchase Program
  • Family-forming benefits, fertility support, and up to 20 weeks of Parental Leave
  • Free therapy sessions, financial and professional coaching, and legal advice
  • Monthly stipend to support our remote work model
  • Annual “development dollars” to support our people growth and development

About Marqeta

Marqeta is on a mission to change the way money moves. We’re one of the earliest enablers of embedded finance, a market opportunity sized up in the trillions. Our card issuing platform provides unprecedented flexibility and control for companies to issue cards, authorize transactions, and manage payment operations in real time. Marqeta is powering the most well known brands in the new economy (Block, Cash App, Affirm, Instacart, Doordash, Uber, Walmart, etc). You don’t need to be a Payments expert to join the Marqeta Team, let us help you with that.  This is the opportunity of a lifetime to work with innovators around the world and unlock equitable financial access for all.


Marqeta’s Values

– Intentional Curiosity: We believe in asking the questions others shy away from. True progress comes from understanding today’s realities while challenging ourselves to do better and take on the status quo. 

– Thoughtful Responsibility: We believe that every interaction with our technology and platforms matters. Businesses and livelihoods rely on our work, so we strive for excellence and accountability every day with the highest standards for failsafe technology and compliance.

– Innovative Simplicity: We believe that simplicity is powerful, especially in innovation—making a tool work better or finishing that feature that makes everyone smile. Our customers face a lot of complexity. We’re not here to add more.

– Shared Success: We believe the measure of our success is the success of our employees, customers, and communities. From local businesses to big corporations, our impact goes deep and wide. And we’ve got the results to prove it.

– Passion to Thrive: We believe anyone with a better idea should be able to change the game for our company and our customers. We solve big problems for our customers and draw energy from that challenge and opportunity.


Equal Employment Opportunity, Accommodations and Privacy 

Marqeta is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that gives consideration to all qualified applicants regardless of race, ancestry, national  origin, color, Indigenous, citizenship, religion/creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression marital status, family status, disability, veteran status, criminal histories consistent with legal requirements, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. 

Our dedication to diversity and inclusion extends beyond the categories above. Review Marqeta’s ESG Report to see that dedication in action. Fostering an environment where everyone feels valued and respected creates a stronger and more innovative team at Marqeta. We celebrate the unique contributions of each individual and empower all members of our organization. Join us in building a company where diversity thrives and everyone can be their authentic selves.

If you require reasonable accommodation for the application process and beyond (including due to a disability), please submit this form and we will be more than happy to assist you. Marqeta will make reasonable accommodations for candidates when needed in accordance with applicable law. The Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice applies to the personal data that you directly provide to us or that we collect during the application and candidate recruitment process.