Staff SW Engineer - Backend

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