Staff SW Engineer
Visa is hiring a Staff SW Engineer in Foster City, United States. It pays $146k-$234k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Visa.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Uses AI ●●○○: an ordinary role that requires AI tools.
- The posting mentions ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Visa has 826 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Staff Software Engineer leading complex system design and delivery while leveraging AI-assisted development tools to accelerate engineering velocity.
About Us
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
Staff Software Engineers are senior technical leaders and system thinkers who define, architect, and drive the delivery of complex, large-scale software systems. In this role, engineers spend approximately 50–65% of their time in hands-on technical work — coding, architecting, prototyping, and reviewing — while dedicating the remainder to technical leadership, cross-functional alignment, and engineering excellence initiatives. Staff Engineers work with modern tools and platforms (including AI-assisted development, cloud-native services, and automation frameworks) to deliver secure, scalable, and high-quality technology solutions that create measurable business impact in the fintech sector. They operate as force multipliers — partnering with engineering managers, product leads, architects, data scientists, compliance, and operations to shape technical strategy, resolve ambiguity, and raise the engineering bar across teams and disciplines.
All roles require digital fluency, including the ability to work with and advocate for emerging technologies such as Generative AI tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude) to accelerate engineering velocity, improve code quality, and support everyday technical decision-making.
Key Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with stakeholders to determine requirements for product components and incorporate feedback into future designs or solutions.
- Translate functional requirements into system designs and communicate component interactions, ensuring alignment with business needs and timelines.
- Design and develop product components, refine code plans, and lead design reviews to ensure completeness and adherence to requirements.
- Contribute to project estimation, considering delivery costs and escalating issues that may cause delays.
- Lead by example in creating, implementing, and maintaining extensible, reusable code, and drive code quality through metrics and best practices.
- Apply debugging tools to resolve moderately complex issues and identify opportunities for automation across products.
- Lead code reviews, ensuring adherence to coding standards and providing feedback to team members.
- Create complex test plans, identify test gaps, and proactively address defects to minimize customer impact.
- Leverage data analysis and monitoring standards to identify patterns and defects in all environments.
- Respond to incidents during on-call rotations, troubleshoot complex issues, and assist in incident response and resolution.
- Build, enhance, and identify new developer tools to support programs and applications.
- Proactively seek new knowledge and adapt to trends and technical solutions to improve product performance and recommend resources to other engineers.
Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.
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:
- 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.
- 6 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or 4 or more years of relevant experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or up to 3 years of relevant experience with a PhD.
- Experience in software engineering or a directly related field.
- Experience in developing full stack (frontend+backend) and/or implementing web-based or mobile applications using AI tools.
- Experience in a leadership role with or without direct reports.
- Experience in technologies/software systems or a directly related field.
- Experience in creating and maintaining test plans and executing testing procedures.
- Experience in debugging and troubleshooting software issues.
- Experience in collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver technical solutions.
- Experience in code review and applying coding standards.
- Experience in building or enhancing developer tools.
- Experience working with container-based technologies.
- Experience building and testing enterprise-scale web services.
- Experience in product development.
- Experience working on client-facing project or technical teams.
Information for US Applicants
Work Hours
Varies upon the needs of the department.
Travel Requirements
This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.
Mental/Physical Requirements
This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.
Visa is an EEO Employer
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.How we rate this
Staff SW Engineer at Visa rates 45 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Uses AI (AI Level 2 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Uses AI. An ordinary role that requires AI tools.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where system architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where cloud native was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where coding was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where technical leadership was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Software Engineering, System Architecture, Cloud Native, Coding, and Technical Leadership. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Put the AI tool in a bullet point about what you did, not just in a skills list. This role treats it as a required part of the job.
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