Director Software Engineering

Company Description

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

Visa’s Technology Organization is a community of problem solvers and innovators reshaping the future of commerce. We operate the world’s most sophisticated processing networks capable of handling more than 65k secure transactions a second across 80M merchants, 15k Financial Institutions, and billions of everyday people. While working with us you’ll get to work on complex distributed systems and solve massive scale problems centered on new payment flows, business and data solutions, cyber security, and B2C platforms.     

The Opportunity: 

We are seeking a Director of Software Engineering to lead the design and delivery of large-scale, distributed foundational services powering our risk platform. This leader will drive a cloud-first architecture strategy, build highly available and performant systems at global scale, and bring deep technical expertise across distributed systems, platform engineering, and modern cloud infrastructure 

The Work itself: 

• Lead a team, design code and systems that scale to world population while influencing Visa’s internal standards for scalability, security, and reusability 
• Collaborate multi-functionally to create design artifacts and develop best-in-class software solutions for multiple Visa technical offerings 
• Actively contribute to product quality improvements, valuable service technology, and new business flows in diverse agile squads 
• Develop robust and scalable products intended for a myriad of customers including end-user merchants, b2b, and business to government solutions. 
• Leverage innovative technologies to build the next generation of Payment Services, Transaction Platforms, Real-Time Payments, and Buy Now Pay Later Technology 
• Opportunities to make a difference on a global or local scale through mentorship and continued learning opportunities 

Essential Functions:

• Aligns enhancements and modifications to existing software coding standard processes and design specifications, across regions, and ensures they are aligned with current security standards.
• Guides the implementation of automation to improve effectiveness and efficiencies of systems and tools across regions and supports development and implementation of new automation, identifying where investment will yield the greatest efficiencies.
• Maintains communication with regional leadership across functions to monitor and direct the cadence of code reviews, on-call rotations, and incident responses throughout product development and operations cycles.
• Leverages back-end technical expertise on underlying systems/platforms across the organization to lead the development systematic improvements in processes to ensure the fulfillment of customer/business objectives.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• 10+ years of relevant work experience and a Bachelors degree, 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
• 7+ years of engineering leadership experience, including managing managers and leading multi-team organizations delivering complex, production-grade systems.
• Deep expertise in large-scale distributed systems design, including multi-region architectures, fault isolation, data consistency models, and performance optimization.
• Proven track record operating high-availability, mission-critical services, with strong ownership of reliability, observability, incident management, and operational excellence (SLOs/SLAs).
• Demonstrated innovation in technical systems and engineering processes, driving step-change improvements in scalability, developer productivity, quality, or cost efficiency.
• Hands-on experience integrating AI into software development workflows and products, including automation, intelligent tooling, or AI-native system design.
• Strategic thinker with strong execution rigor — able to translate long-term platform vision into clear roadmaps, measurable outcomes, and disciplined delivery.

The Skills You Bring:

• Energy and Experience: A growth mindset that is curious and passionate about technologies and enjoys challenging projects on a global scale
• Challenge the Status Quo: Comfort in pushing the boundaries, ‘hacking’ beyond traditional solutions
• Language Expertise: Expertise in one or more general development languages (e.g., Java, C#, C++)
• Builder: Experience building and deploying modern services and web applications with quality and scalability
• Learner: Constant drive to learn new technologies such as Angular, React, Kubernetes, Docker, etc.
• Partnership: Experience collaborating with Product, Test, Dev-ops, and Agile/Scrum teams

Additional Information

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 protected veteran status.  Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.

U.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated salary range for this position is 186,800.00 to 299,200.00 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.