Lead Architect, Developer Platforms

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:

The Developer Platforms Engineering team at PayPal focuses on enabling engineering teams to build, deploy, and manage their applications with improved velocity, reliability, and scalability. As part of the ADAPT Infrastructure Architecture Team, the Developer Platforms Lead Architect drives the vision for Developer Experience by building tools, frameworks, and environments that empower PayPal’s engineering teams to thrive. This role serves as a key bridge across Enterprise Architecture, Developer Platform Engineering (DPE), Infrastructure, SRE, Cloud domains, and more.

Ideal candidates will possess both a technical vision and hands-on experience shaping world-class internal developer platforms and workflows. This is an opportunity to foster a high-impact engineering culture while delivering solutions that prioritize developer success, scalability, and innovation.

Job Description:

Key Responsibilities:

Strategy & Planning

• Define and maintain the Long-Term Architecture (LTA) for Developer Platforms and Experience, ensuring alignment with Enterprise Architecture.
• Develop a vision and roadmap for Developer Platforms and ensure alignment across Infrastructure, Cloud, SRE and AI/ML domains.
• Champion developer-centric practices across PayPal’s engineering organization while managing technical debt related to CI/CD, test environments, and developer portals.
• Lead decision-making processes for technology investments, focusing on industry standards (e.g. COTS, open-source solutions) for developer productivity tools and frameworks.
• Apply organizational principles like Conway’s Law to optimize team alignment and system design in ways that improve developer workflows.

Technical Architecture

• Architect scalable integration patterns for internal Developer Platforms, test environments, CI/CD pipelines, and other productivity engineering solutions.
• Develop and maintain technical standards, architectural blueprints, and design patterns for internal developer tools.
• Design and lead the implementation of developer-focused solutions such as portals, API management/gateway integrations (e.g., Kong, GraphQL), and environments for full-cycle development.
• Evaluate and guide strategic architectural investments (e.g., service mesh, staging environments' scalability, API observability).
• Prioritize reliability, scalability, traceability, monitoring, observability, and security in all design and architecture decisions.

Developer Productivity

• Drive enhancem