Staff Security Engineer, API Security

Job description

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: This role sits at the core of Product and AI Security engineering. This job leverages security expertise to resolve complex security issues, partners with teams to drive security initiatives, applies analytical skills to solve security challenges, contributes to security improvements, and influences security processes. Job Description: Essential Responsibilities: • Leverage specialized security expertise to identify and resolve complex security issues, recommending best practices and determining new approaches that have an impact on broader security operations, while aligning security strategies with business priorities • Partner across teams and key stakeholders to drive security initiatives, leading and solutioning complex projects and programs to strengthen overall security posture. • Apply advanced analytical skills and sound judgment to solve security challenges, considering diverse perspectives and innovative solutions. Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies, understanding their security implications to the company’s context. • Directly contribute to improvements within the security domain and occasionally beyond, ensuring decisions lead to meaningful enhancements in security practices. • Leverage relationships across teams, both within and outside of security, to influence initiatives and integrate feedback into security processes. Minimum Qualifications: • 5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience. Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications: In your day-to-day role you will be responsible for: • Build the end-state API security capability plane: Consolidate today's separate API security lint, gateway traffic visibility, shadow-API detection, and schema (GraphQL/AsyncAPI) security checks into a single, coherent capability that plugs into the org's shared policy-as-code enforcement architecture - the same engine already governing container, static-analysis, and software-composition findings. Design the end state first - this is not a request to bolt on another point tool. • Take the pre-release API security gate from draft architecture decision to a shipped control, working with the Staff Engineer who owns enforcement architecture to get the gateway-level hard-block policy enforced end to end. This person unblocks stalled decisions - they do not wait for consensus to form on its own. • Own the dynamic application security testing (DAST) tooling strategy end to end: complete the current tool evaluation into a production migration decision, and execute it. • Extend API security capability into two domains identified as organizational blind spots - pipeline access & execution control, and systemic artifact consumption verification - treating API security as one instance of the broader supply-chain security problem, not a silo, and enabling them through the shared enforcement architecture rather than a parallel one. • Be a force multiplier: mentor engineers across the merged team, unblock stuck initiatives, and drive delivery and innovation without waiting to be told what's next. Standard staff-engineer responsibilities and day-to-day routines apply in full - technical leadership, design review, on-call/escalation, sustaining engineering, and maintenance are shared responsibilities like any other staff engineer, not exceptions carved out for this role. • Shape the Roadmap: Work with the engineering manager and tech leads to shape and prioritize the team's backlog, identify emerging business problems before they become fire drills, and think beyond the current scope of the role rather than just executing what's already been defined. **What do