SWE Manager, Fraud Science Data Platform
PayPal
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 protect 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. As a Software Engineering Manager, you will lead a team of 3–5 data-platform engineers while staying hands-on in designing and implementing our fraud feature store and account-linking intelligence systems. You will architect a next-generation datamart that unifies diverse data sources into a modular, production-grade platform for Global Financial Crimes and Customer Protection. This role requires a technical leader who writes code and guides others, balancing hands-on contribution with coaching skilled engineers. You will set engineering standards, drive cross-functional alignment, and accelerate delivery of new detection features.Job Description:
Essential Responsibilities:
- Directly manages software development projects (including program management) and execution through individual contributors. May also lead project teams across platforms or groups
- Implements processes to drive strong operational hygiene for all components and systems within their group
- Responsible for the delivery of projects, including quality and timeliness, that impact their domain and potentially one other
- Demonstrates strong tactical ability by managing the roadmap for a scrum team responsible for technical issues of diverse scope where analysis requires an understanding of current business or tends
- Competent at communicating technical issues with non-technical audiences
- Analyzes multiple sources of information and identifies & resolves complex technical, operational, and organizational problems relating to software development.
- Collaborates with direct team, managers in org, stakeholders such as Product Owners & PMO
Expected Qualifications:
- 5+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:
What You'll Do
Lead and develop a team of 3-5 data platform engineers, providing technical guidance, mentorship, and coordination to align efforts across the datamart initiative. Facilitate communication and collaboration among highly skilled team members.
Establish team engineering practices including CI/CD for SQL repositories, code governance, naming conventions, dependency-aware DAGs, testable transformations, and documentation standards that enable your team to work efficiently and maintain quality.
Architect and build a next-generation datamart that consolidates diverse data sources into a unified, governed platform serving fraud detection, investigations, and ML modeling teams—transforming crowd-sourced investigator signals and cross-account relationships into production-grade risk detection assets.
Design and implement scalable feature engineering pipelines using dbt, Dataform, or similar frameworks that translate investigative heuristics, typology insights, and linking intelligence into ML-ready features with rapid deployment cycles.
Build and operate robust data transformation infrastructure across account, transaction, and session/login domains using BigQuery to support comprehensive detection of fraud, money laundering, and emerging global threats.
Coordinate with PayPal's Data Foundational Services team to ensure all intelligence pipelines meet enterprise standards for reliability, monitoring, and data lineage, while managing production job scheduling with Airflow/Cloud Composer or equivalent orchestration platforms.
Create semantic modeling frameworks and contribution layers that empower investigators and analysts to define detection logic without requiring deep engineering intervention.
Expected Qualifications
8+ years of production data engineering experience building and maintaining large-scale data pipelines with deep expertise in SQL optimization, data modeling, and multi-source data transformation design. 2+ years in a technical lead or management role balancing hands-on engineering with team coordination.
BigQuery Mastery + Cloud Orchestration: Expert in BigQuery SQL, scripting, dynamic query execution, clustering/partitioning, and performance tuning on billion-row datasets. Hands-on experience with Airflow/Cloud Composer, dbt, or Dataform for DAG scheduling, backfills, dependency management, and production job orchestration.
Advanced Data Modeling & Semantic Abstraction: Strong understanding of dimensional modeling, entity linking, identity resolution, and feature registries. Proven ability to design semantic layers that expose intuitive business logic while enforcing engineering rigor.
Data Quality, Observability & Cost Governance: Experience building validation frameworks (Great Expectations, dbt tests, or custom SQL checks). Skilled in BigQuery query optimization, slot management, and designing cost-efficient large-scale pipelines.
Software Engineering Excellence: Strong fundamentals in Git workflows, code reviews, testing strategies, CI/CD, operational monitoring, and incident management. Demonstrated ability to implement code standards, modular patterns, and reproducible pipeline templates.
Feature Store & ML Platform Experience: Experience building or contributing to feature stores serving batch and real-time ML systems. Familiarity with feature drift, leakage control, and temporal-based testing strategies.
Python for Data Engineering: Strong proficiency using Python for data processing, orchestration, and feature engineering.
Team Leadership & Communication: Experience managing or leading small technical teams (3-5 engineers). Ability to facilitate collaboration among diverse working styles, mentor engineers on technical skills, and coordinate work across multiple contributors. Strong written and verbal communication skills for explaining technical decisions to stakeholders.
Preferred Qualifications
ML Feature Engineering for Fraud/Financial Crimes: Experience translating investigative heuristics or patterns into stable, leakage-resistant ML features. Ability to collaborate with data scientists and investigators to convert domain expertise into engineered data products.
Fraud/Financial Crimes Domain: Understanding of fraud typologies, AML red flags, behavioral patterns, or investigative workflows. Experience partnering directly with investigators, typology subject matter experts, or threat intelligence teams. (Note: Domain expertise is valuable but not required—we can teach fraud domain knowledge to strong engineers.)
Real-time/Streaming Architectures: Exposure to near-real-time model feature serving, streaming data pipelines, or event-driven architectures beyond batch processing.
Technical Leadership in Regulated Environments: Experience building auditable, governed data systems or leading technical initiatives in financial services industry. Understanding of data governance, audit requirements, and compliance considerations in platform design.
Required:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or quantitative field; advanced degree preferred
Ability to describe production systems you’ve architected or operated at scale
Excellent communication and documentation skills—ability to explain complex technical decisions to diverse stakeholders
Subsidiary:
PayPalTravel Percent:
0PayPal does not charge candidates any fees for courses, applications, resume reviews, interviews, background checks, or onboarding. Any such request is a red flag and likely part of a scam. 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 benefits to help you thrive in every stage of life. We champion your financial, physical, and mental health by offering valuable benefits and resources to help you care for the whole you.
We have great benefits including a flexible work environment, employee shares options, health and life insurance and more. To learn more about our benefits please visit https://www.paypalbenefits.com.
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.