Sr SWE, Fraud Science Data Platform

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 Fraud Science & Intelligence (FSI) team at PayPal builds the data and intelligence platforms that safeguard our customers and enable risk, compliance, and financial crime detection at global scale. We combine advanced data engineering, applied ML, and threat intelligence to uncover and disrupt sophisticated criminal networks operating globally. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be responsible for developing, maintaining, and optimizing the SQL pipelines that power our fraud feature store and account linking intelligence systems. You will work on production-grade data transformations in BigQuery, manage job scheduling and orchestration, and drive significant performance improvements to reduce runtime execution costs. This role is ideal for an engineer who loves building efficient, maintainable SQL pipelines and wants to see their work directly impact fraud detection across PayPal's platform.

Job Description:

Essential Responsibilities:

• Delivers complete solutions spanning all phases of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) (design, implementation, testing, delivery and operations), based on definitions from more senior roles.
• Advises immediate management on project-level issues
• Guides junior engineers
• Operates with little day-to-day supervision, making technical decisions based on knowledge of internal conventions and industry best practices
• Applies knowledge of technical best practices in making decisions

Minimum Qualifications:

• 3+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.

What You’ll Do

Essential responsibilities

• Delivers complete solutions spanning all phases of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) (design, implementation, testing, delivery and operations), based on definitions from more senior roles.

• Advises immediate management on project-level issues

• Guides junior engineers

• Operates with little day-to-day supervision, making technical decisions based on knowledge of internal conventions and industry best practices

• Applies knowledge of technical best practices in making decisions

Additional responsibilities

• Design, implement, and optimize software for processing large-scale graphs, with careful attention to algorithmic complexity, memory usage, and performance trade-offs.

• Leverage graph algorithms and libraries — traversal, connected components, community detection, clustering, path ranking, and related techniques — to address fraud-linking problems.

• Work with existing fraud-linking systems and supplement them with new capabilities, improved algorithms, reusable modules, and better tooling.

• Translate fraud patterns, investigative findings, and team requirements into practical software implementations.

• Create and select relevant features from raw data for use in FSL’s fraud-linking framework.

• Apply basic statistical reasoning to combine multiple weak or noisy signals into stronger fraud indicators.

• Identify opportunities to integrate FSL graph-linking capabilities with partner teams’ platforms and workflows.

• Anticipate future scale, performance, and maintainability challenges, and proactively propose improvements.

• Collaborate with fraud experts, investigators, data scientists, ML teams, and other engineers to improve fraud detection coverage.

What We’re Looking For

Minimum qualifications

• 3+ years relevant experience and a bachelor’s degree OR any equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Solid understanding of data structures, algorithmic complexity, memory usage, and performance trade-offs.

Preferred qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in software engineering, algorithmic engineering, research engineering, or another role involving complex data structures and performance-sensitive code.

 • Strong programming skills in a modern language (Python preferred) and comfort working with large datasets in a cloud data warehouse.

• Working knowledge of graph algorithms and the ability to choose appropriate techniques and tools for a given problem.

• Ability to take an ambiguous problem, reason through possible algorithmic approaches, and implement a pragmatic solution.

• Track record of shipping and maintaining production-quality code, with strong habits around testing, profiling, and documentation.

• Self-driven and intellectually curious, with the ability to operate independently in an evolving problem space.

Subsidiary:

PayPal

Travel Percent:

0

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.