Director – Intelligent Routing & Platform Infrastructure

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: PayPal moves money for hundreds of millions of people and businesses across the globe — and the infrastructure that makes that possible must be nothing short of extraordinary. We are looking for a Director of Software Engineering to lead the teams responsible for the intelligent fabric that routes, secures, and scales every transaction and API call across our global platform. We are looking for a transformation leader — someone who arrives with a sharp point of view on what world-class infrastructure looks like, the engineering conviction to make the case for it, and the operational discipline to execute it at PayPal's scale. You will own our intelligent routing services (Service Mesh, API Gateway), Kubernetes fleet management, and IaaS platforms. More importantly, you will set a new bar for how these systems are built, operated, and evolved. Job Description: Essential Responsibilities: Directs and controls the delivery of business and technical outcomes that comprise multiple projects and operational activities within a domain through organizational and technical leadership Defines engineering health objectives that drive organization health, engineering best practices and operational targets Drives product and technical strategy with cross-functional leaders across the enterprise to deliver Domain goals Responsible for the delivery of programs, establishing annual organizational goals and ensuring performance and results that impact both their domain and potentially enterprise Develops engineering strategy that translates into operational and tactical plans; uses ground-breaking methods to think beyond existing solutions Sets the tri-annual roadmap for a domain level organization. Defines the operational strategy for a domain based on a defined budget Evaluates key business challenges and can complete complex, ambiguous initiatives having impact across engineering; directs the development of new or innovative solutions. Ability to deal with high levels of technical domain level ambiguity. Collaborates with direct team, managers in org, stakeholders, managers in other orgs, external partners and business stakeholders Minimum Qualifications: 10+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience. 2 years of experience leading others Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications: Why This Role PayPal's infrastructure is the heartbeat of global commerce for hundreds of millions of consumers and merchants. The decisions made in this role affect reliability, security, and developer productivity at a scale very few engineers ever get to operate at. This is a role where technical craftsmanship, leadership, and business impact converge. If you're a leader with exceptional people skills and want to build something that genuinely matters and leave a platform better than you found it, this is your opportunity. What You Will Own Intelligent Routing Services: Own the strategy, architecture, and execution for Service Mesh (Istio or equivalent) and API Gateway (Kgateway or equivalent) platforms serving PayPal's microservices and cloud-native ecosystem Drive adoption of advanced traffic management capabilities: fine-grained routing policies, circuit breaking, mutual TLS, observability instrumentation, and progressive delivery patterns (canary, blue/green, A/B) Partner with Security, Reliability, and Product Engineering teams to embed security, compliance, and resilience primitives directly into the routing layer — making safe behaviour the default, not the exception Kubernetes Fleet Management: Lead the engineering teams managing PayPal's multi-cluster, multi-region Kubernetes fleet at one of the largest private Kubernetes deployments in the world Own the full lifecycle: cluster provisioning, upgrades, node pool management, workload placement policies, autoscaling, resource governance, and decommissioning Define and enforce fleet-wide standards for cluster hardening, RBAC models, admission control, and policy enforcement via tools like OPA/Gatekeeper or Kyverno Drive a platform-as-a-product mindset — engineering teams that consume the platform should experience it as a force multiplier, not a bottleneck IaaS Platforms – Compute & Traffic Management: Own the engineering and roadmap for compute provisioning platforms (bare metal, VM, containerized) supporting PayPal's private and hybrid cloud infrastructure Drive the design of traffic management systems including global load balancing, anycast routing, DNS-based traffic steering, and edge ingress architecture Build programmatic, API-first infrastructure surfaces that enable engineering teams to self-serve confidently, with guardrails baked in What Transformation Looks Like in This Role You won't just lead teams — you will actively reshape how infrastructure is conceived, delivered, and operated at PayPal. Specifically, this means: Raising the engineering bar relentlessly. You will define what "excellent" looks like across your domains — from design reviews to incident response to capacity planning — and hold your teams and your peers to it. You will build cultures where mediocrity is uncomfortable and craft is celebrated. Driving from reactive to proactive operations. You will lead the shift from ticket-driven, toil-heavy operations to an automated, self-healing, policy-driven operational model. Every manual runbook is a future automation. Every on-call page is a future fix. You will build teams that think this way. Establishing platform contracts that matter. You will define and publish SLOs, SLAs, and reliability commitments for every platform you own, and you will stand behind them. Internal customers will know exactly what they're getting and you will hold your teams accountable to delivering it. Modernizing at scale without breaking things. You will develop and execute migration strategies that move legacy infrastructure and operational models forward without disruption to PayPal's core business flows. You understand risk management as an engineering discipline. Building bridges, not silos. You will actively partner with Product, Engineering, Security, Operations, and Executive stakeholders to align platform investments with business outcomes — translating deeply technical decisions into the language of risk, velocity, and cost. Who You Are Leadership & People 15+ years of software engineering experience with at least 5+ years leading senior engineering organizations (multiple teams, multiple managers) Proven track record building and developing high-performing engineering teams, including hiring senior and staff-level engineers and managers Ability to attract exceptional talent and build a team culture of ownership, accountability, and psychological safety Experience leading geographically distributed and diverse teams across time zones and cultures Strong executive presence: you communicate technical strategy clearly to C-suite and can defend your architectural bets Technical Depth Deep expertise in service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd, Envoy), API gateway platforms (Kgateway, Kong, Apigee), and Layer 4/7 traffic management at scale Hands-on background in Kubernetes at enterprise scale — you understand the internals well enough to debug, the breadth to set fleet-wide standards, and the experience to know where the bodies are buried Strong foundation in IaaS and compute platforms — cloud-native and private cloud; familiarity with OpenStack, KVM, or equivalent private cloud stacks is a plus Fluency in networking fundamentals: BGP, DNS, TLS/mTLS, load balancing, CDN architecture Experience with infrastructure-as-code and GitOps practices (Terraform, Helm, ArgoCD, Flux) Familiarity with FinOps principles and infrastructure cost optimization at scale Transformation & Strategy Demonstrated history of driving large-scale platform modernization or operational transformation initiatives — not just contributing to them, but owning them end to end Strong instincts for developer experience and platform product thinking Ability to develop multi-year technical roadmaps that balance innovation, reliability, and pragmatic execution Comfort operating in ambiguity and making high-quality decisions with imperfect information How We Measure Success In your first 3 months, success looks like: Deep understanding of PayPal's infrastructure landscape, team health, and the most critical gaps in reliability, operations, and capability Credibility established with peer engineering leaders, key stakeholders, and your own teams A clear, prioritized transformation roadmap with executive alignment and engineering buy-in In your first year, success looks like: Measurable reduction in operational toil and manual interventions across your platforms Improved platform SLOs and customer satisfaction from internal engineering consumers Tangible progress on at least one major modernization initiative (mesh adoption, fleet upgrades, certificate lifecycle automation, etc.) A stronger, more empowered team than you inherited — with a reputation as a destination for top infrastructure engineering talent Subsidiary: PayPal Travel Percent: 0 - The base pay for this role will depend on where you work and the relevant experience and expertise you bring. The expected range of pay for this role by location is: Primary Location | Pay Range: Austin, Texas | ($198,000.00 - $294,250.00 Annually) Additional Location(s) | Pay Range: Scottsdale, Arizona | ($188,000.00 - $279,400.00 Annually)
 Additional compensation for this role may include an annual performance bonus, equity, or other incentive compensation, as applicable. PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. When making an application directly, we will never ask you to share passwords, one-time passcodes (OTP), or verification codes.  Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. All communication regarding your application will come from official PayPal email domains. If you suspect fraudulent activity, please report it immediately.  To learn more about how to identify and avoid recruitment fraud please visit https://careers.pypl.com/contact-us.  For the majority of employees, PayPal's balanced hybrid work model offers 3 days in the office for effective in-person collaboration and 2 days at your choice of either the PayPal office or your home workspace, ensuring that you equally have the benefits and conveniences of both locations. Our Benefits: At PayPal, we’re committed to building an equitable and inclusive global economy. And we can’t do this without our most important asset-you. That’s why we offer comprehensive, choice-based programs, to support all aspects of personal wellbeing—physical, emotional, and financial—delivering meaningful value where it matters most. We strive to create a flexible, balanced work culture with a holistic approach to benefits, including generous paid time off, healthcare coverage for you and your family, and resources to create financial security and support your mental health. Who We Are: Click Here to learn more about our culture and community. Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion  PayPal provides equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all persons regardless of age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.  In addition, PayPal will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.  If you are unable to submit an application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at paypalglobaltalentacquisition@paypal.com. Belonging at PayPal:  Our employees are central to advancing our mission, and we strive to create an environment where everyone can do their best work with a sense of purpose and belonging. Belonging at PayPal means creating a workplace with a sense of acceptance and security where all employees feel included and valued. We are proud to have a diverse workforce reflective of the merchants, consumers, and communities that we serve, and we continue to take tangible actions to cultivate inclusivity and belonging at PayPal. Any general requests for consideration of your skills, please Join our Talent Community. We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.