Lead Software Engineer

Job Summary

The Lead Software Engineer is the highest individual contributor technical role responsible for setting technical vision, driving architectural excellence, and solving the most complex technical challenges for Visa's Acceptance Solutions platform, focusing on transaction processing platform. This role combines deep technical expertise (40-50% hands-on) with strategic leadership, cross-organizational influence, and pioneering adoption of Generative AI and agentic AI at scale.

The Work Itself

• Design and build scalable, secure, and resilient software systems that support Visa's Acceptance Solutions platform and global transaction processing capabilities.
• Set technical direction and influence architectural standards for distributed systems, platform reliability, scalability, security, and reusability.
• Lead the development of mission-critical transaction processing solutions that support high-volume payment flows, event-driven processing, and real-time data movement.
• Collaborate with product, architecture, security, operations, and engineering teams to create design artifacts and deliver best-in-class software solutions.
• Solve complex technical challenges across cloud-native platforms, distributed architecture, event streaming, API security, and payment lifecycle management.
• Actively contribute to product quality, platform modernization, value-added services, and new business flows through hands-on development and technical leadership.
• Leverage modern technologies, including cloud platforms, Kubernetes, Kafka, and AI-enabled engineering practices, to advance Visa's next-generation payment capabilities.
• Mentor engineers, influence technical leaders, and promote a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, continuous learning, and measurable business impact.

Essential Functions

• Lead the architecture, design, development, enhancement, and modernization of software solutions for Visa's Acceptance Solutions transaction processing platform.
• Develop secure, scalable, high-quality code that complies with design specifications, engineering standards, and security best practices.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership for complex software development efforts while influencing technical direction across multiple teams.
• Drive design and code reviews to ensure solutions meet expectations for performance, resiliency, observability, scalability, security, and maintainability.
• Identify and implement automation opportunities across development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and operational workflows.
• Partner with product owners, architects, security teams, operations teams, and engineering stakeholders to align technical solutions with customer and business objectives.
• Use production telemetry, system analysis, and operational insights to recommend improvements to architecture, code, processes, and platform reliability.
• Support agile delivery, release readiness, on-call rotations, incident response, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement of production systems.
• Guide the adoption of modern engineering practices, including cloud-native development, event-driven architecture, secure integration patterns, and AI-enabled development workflows.
• Mentor senior engineers, develop technical talent, and contribute to reusable frameworks, architecture documentation, and engineering best practices.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or at least 7 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 4 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD.
• 15+ years of experience with progressive technical leadership responsibilities.
• Demonstrated track record as a technical leader with organization-wide impact.
• Deep expertise in designing and scaling mission-critical distributed systems.
• Proven ability to solve complex problems that span multiple technical domains.
• Experience setting technical direction and influencing strategy across teams.
• Expert proficiency in modern programming languages and system design.
• Mastery of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), Kubernetes, and distributed architecture.
• Deep experience with event-driven systems, Kafka, and high-throughput data processing.
• Experience with security architecture (OAuth 2.0, JWT, mTLS, encryption, IAM).
• Track record of mentoring senior engineers and developing technical leaders.
• Experience pioneering AI-enabled engineering practices at organizational scale. Deep understanding of payment processing and transaction lifecycle
• Expertise in event-driven architecture and event streaming platforms (Kafka)
• Knowledge of payment capture processing and event enrichment
• Experience with file transfer protocols (SFTP) and batch processing.
• Experience in payments, financial services, or high-scale transaction processing.
• Recognized expertise in distributed systems (publications, speaking engagements, patents).
• Experience with AI/ML at scale, including production deployment of intelligent systems.
• Track record of building and evolving platforms serving billions of transactions.
• Experience working with executive leadership on technical strategy.
• History of developing engineers who have grown into senior technical roles.
• Experience with PCI-DSS, SOX, and financial services regulatory compliance. Understanding of payment network protocols (Visa, Mastercard, Amex)
• Experience with event correlation and transaction matching
• Knowledge of retry mechanisms, dead-letter queues, and event replay
• Experience with data serialization formats (Avro, Protobuf, JSON)
• Understanding of exactly-once processing and idempotency patterns.

Pay and benefits

For roles located in the US, the estimated salary range for this position is $174,400.00 to $ 279,100.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity.Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.

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.