Senior Staff Software Engineer

PayZen is on a mission to bring financial health to healthcare. Our products improve both access and affordability for patients and cash flow & administrative complexity for medical providers. We are trusted by a rapidly growing number of health systems, hospitals, and physician groups and are backed by leading venture capital investors, including NEA, SignalFire, Viola Group, and 7Wire Ventures.

We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to serve as the primary technical architect for PayZen's engineering organization. At this level, your impact is measured by the success of entire business lines and the long-term sustainability of our technology stack. You are not just solving today's problems — you are anticipating the engineering and compliance challenges we will face two to three years from now and building the foundation to meet them.

This is a premier individual contributor role at the highest level of technical leadership. You are expected to remain hands-on — contributing to critical implementations, reviewing code and system designs at the most consequential decision points, and setting the technical standard others calibrate against. You own the consequences of your architectural decisions, not just the recommendations.

You will drive AI-native development across the organization — not just for your own productivity, but to systematically redefine how the entire engineering team delivers value.

You will report to the SVP of Engineering. This role is based in our San Francisco headquarters, with in-office days on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

Define Technical Strategy

Own the multi-year architectural roadmap for PayZen's core systems — transaction processing, data infrastructure, identity, and integrations. Make high-conviction bets that keep the platform resilient, scalable, secure, and compliant at billions in healthcare payments volume. You own the consequences, not just the recommendations.

Architect Cross-Functional Solutions

Resolve technical conflicts across teams that don't report to you — synthesizing competing priorities, making trade-off calls transparently, and building lasting alignment. Ensure engineering investments compound our data advantage across the healthcare financial lifecycle.

Own Platform and Shared Infrastructure

Consolidate redundant solutions into shared platforms that raise the capability ceiling for every team. Design the libraries, APIs, and services others build on. Prevent fragmentation before it becomes irreversible debt.

Architect for Compliance and Security

Build HIPAA-compliant, PCI-DSS-ready, SOC 2-auditable systems by default — not by retrofit. Identify regulatory exposure at the architecture layer and embed compliance requirements into org-wide engineering standards.

Drive Step-Change System Improvements

Deliver architecture improvements with measurable impact on developer velocity, reliability, and product capability in. Stay hands-on: prototype what you advocate for, write the reference code that sets patterns, and engage at the lowest level when it matters.

Create Technical Clarity

Author the definitive RFCs, design docs, and ADRs for PayZen's most consequential initiatives. Frame trade-offs clearly, surface second-order consequences, and drive decisions to resolution even under incomplete alignment. Set the documentation standard for the org.

Raise the Engineering Bar

You are the calibration point. Conduct reviews that model the rigor expected at every level of the ladder. Develop best practices that become defaults. Sponsor emerging leaders and provide direct feedback that accelerates their trajectory.

Lead AI-Native Engineering

Drive adoption of LLMs, agentic workflows, and automated reasoning across engineering. Make build-vs-integrate decisions, define guardrails for a regulated environment, and measure outcomes in cycle-time and quality — not just tooling uptake.

• 10+ years of software engineering experience in production systems at meaningful scale

• 4+ years operating at the Staff Engineer level or above, with demonstrated impact beyond a single team's scope

• Deep expertise in designing and maintaining complex distributed systems — including async/sync design patterns, fault tolerance, and horizontal scaling — with a track record of delivering through major migrations and scaling events.

• Working knowledge of application security principles and secure-by-design architectural patterns

• Hands-on proficiency in at least one of: Java, Go, Python, TypeScript, or equivalent — you write and review code, not just documents

• Strong command of relational and non-relational database architecture, including distributed transaction management and data-path latency trade-offs

• Demonstrated ability to influence executive and cross-functional stakeholders through written communication — RFCs, design documents, and strategic technical narratives

• Based in the San Francisco Bay Area