Staff Software Engineer, Customer Onboarding
PayJoy
Software Engineering, Customer Service
San Francisco, CA, USA
Posted on May 6, 2026
About PayJoy
PayJoy, a Public Benefit Corporation, is a mission-first credit provider dedicated to helping under-served customers in emerging markets to achieve financial stability and success. Our patented technology for secured credit provides an on-ramp for new customers to enter the credit system. Through PayJoy’s point-of-sale financing and card offerings, customers gain access to a modern quality of life. PayJoy’s credit also allows our customers to seize opportunities as micro-entrepreneurs, and acts as insurance for tough times. Through our cutting-edge machine learning, data science, and anti-fraud AI, we have served over 18 million customers as of 2025 while achieving solid profitability for sustainable growth.
This role
The Staff Engineer is responsible for leading our technical foundation for our Lending Systems teams (customer onboarding platforms, risk and offer engines, and partner-facing APIs) to drive innovation, while collaborating with other teams. The candidate must take on a mentoring role, design scalable systems, and influence cross-functional initiatives in a hands-on position where they will make key technical decisions and build critical services.
Our Lending Systems team at PayJoy serves 9+ international markets, each with a tailored customer experience. You'll build flexible, maintainable systems that scale with our products and adapt to evolving market demands. You'll balance system complexity, design abstractions, and service encapsulation.
This is an Individual Contributor role focused on designing and executing improvements to our technical foundation.
Responsibilities
PayJoy is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and we welcome and encourage people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
PayJoy Principles
Finance for the next billion * Ownership * Break Through Walls * Live Communication * Transparency & Directness * Focus on Scale * Work-Life Balance * Embrace Diversity * Speed * Active Listening
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
PayJoy, a Public Benefit Corporation, is a mission-first credit provider dedicated to helping under-served customers in emerging markets to achieve financial stability and success. Our patented technology for secured credit provides an on-ramp for new customers to enter the credit system. Through PayJoy’s point-of-sale financing and card offerings, customers gain access to a modern quality of life. PayJoy’s credit also allows our customers to seize opportunities as micro-entrepreneurs, and acts as insurance for tough times. Through our cutting-edge machine learning, data science, and anti-fraud AI, we have served over 18 million customers as of 2025 while achieving solid profitability for sustainable growth.
This role
The Staff Engineer is responsible for leading our technical foundation for our Lending Systems teams (customer onboarding platforms, risk and offer engines, and partner-facing APIs) to drive innovation, while collaborating with other teams. The candidate must take on a mentoring role, design scalable systems, and influence cross-functional initiatives in a hands-on position where they will make key technical decisions and build critical services.
Our Lending Systems team at PayJoy serves 9+ international markets, each with a tailored customer experience. You'll build flexible, maintainable systems that scale with our products and adapt to evolving market demands. You'll balance system complexity, design abstractions, and service encapsulation.
This is an Individual Contributor role focused on designing and executing improvements to our technical foundation.
Responsibilities
- Solve Critical Product & Platform Problems Identify and prioritize issues across UI layers, service boundaries, and data flows. Deliver solutions that improve performance, reliability, and developer experience.
- Architect & Build Scalable Application Components
- Design and implement robust APIs, backend services, and data models. Introduce modern frameworks and patterns that other engineers can adopt across the organization.
- Lead Cross-Functional Engineering Initiatives. Partner with product, design, and engineering teams to define systemwide solutions. Ensure UI, API, and database layers work cohesively and meet business and technical standards.
- Mentor & Develop Engineering talent guide engineers through code reviews, pair programming, and architectural discussions. foster a culture of learning, quality, and thoughtful technical decision-making.
- Continuously Improve the Platform and evaluate existing systems, identify gaps, and drive modernization efforts across frontend frameworks, service architecture, and data infrastructure requirements
- Education & Experience Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or related field.
- 12+ years of experience building and scaling production systems in high-growth environments.
- UI, API, and Backend Expertise
- Strong proficiency in designing and implementing RESTful or event-driven APIs.
- Experience building user interfaces or frontend components that integrate with complex backend systems.
- Deep understanding of backend development in languages such as Java, Python, PHP, or similar.
- Database & Data Modeling Skills, hands-on experience with relational and NoSQL databases, schema design, query optimization, and data integrity patterns.
- Distributed Systems & Architecture solid understanding of system design, scalability, and distributed systems fundamentals.
- Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to lead through influence, collaborate across teams, and mentor engineers at all levels.
- Bonus Experience Exposure to mobile technologies, mobile payments, or fintech systems involving fraud, identity, or high-volume transaction processing. Experience building or maintaining large-scale systems used by millions of users.
- 100% Company-funded health insurance for employee and immediate family
- Company-funded employee life and disability insurance
- 20 Paid vacation days, Flexible sick leave
- $2,000 USD annual Co-working Travel perk
- $2,000 USD annual Professional Development perk
- Headphone benefit, home office equipment allowance and wellness perks
- $340 Company-funded Commuter benefit
- Catered lunches
PayJoy is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and we welcome and encourage people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
PayJoy Principles
Finance for the next billion * Ownership * Break Through Walls * Live Communication * Transparency & Directness * Focus on Scale * Work-Life Balance * Embrace Diversity * Speed * Active Listening
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.