Staff Software Engineer - Stripe Tax

Who we are About Stripe Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone's reach while doing the most important work of your career. About the team Collecting and filing sales & indirect taxes is a classic area for technology disruption. Companies selling across countries, states, and even smaller jurisdictions have to navigate through a myriad of tax rates, product-level tax exemptions, filing requirements, and registration obligations. The rules are constantly changing, and not accurately calculating and filing tax can have legal ramifications. It’s no surprise then that solving tax compliance is a top user request. We launched Stripe Tax as a new SaaS product in 2021 to make tax compliance as effortless as possible. The Stripe Tax team builds the systems and experiences that help businesses understand where they have obligations, calculate the right tax, and automate reporting and filing. We solve this at a global scale for users ranging from ambitious startups to the world’s largest enterprises, whose requirements demand exceptional correctness, extensibility, and operational rigor. What you’ll do We’re looking for an experienced technical leader to shape the architecture and technical roadmap for Stripe Tax. You will work alongside leaders across engineering, product, design, operations, and go-to-market teams to turn complex and evolving tax requirements into simple, reliable experiences for millions of businesses. You will lead high-impact, multi-team efforts, make durable technical decisions, and raise the bar for how we build and operate Stripe Tax. Responsibilities • Drive the technical strategy and execution for Stripe Tax’s most important and ambiguous product and platform investments, from early exploration through production adoption • Work backwards from the needs of complex global businesses and evolving tax regulations to identify high-leverage opportunities and shape the product roadmap • Partner with engineering, product, design, operations, legal, go-to-market, and infrastructure leaders to align teams and deliver cohesive tax experiences across Stripe • Design and evolve scalable, resilient systems and data models that meet the exceptionally high standards for correctness, auditability, security, and availability required in tax • Drive interoperability across Stripe products and external tax ecosystems, scrutinizing service boundaries, interfaces, and data contracts to keep the platform extensible • Raise the engineering bar through hands-on technical leadership, clear decision-making frameworks, operational excellence, and mentorship that accelerates other engineers Who you are We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement. Minimum requirements • 10+ years of industry software engineering experience building and operating large-scale, distributed systems • Deep software engineering expertise, with a track record of making sound architectural decisions while remaining hands-on in the code • A track record of leading complex, multi-team technical programs from ambiguous problem definition through successful delivery and adoption • The ability to set long-term technical direction, identify the highest-leverage investments, and make progress amid uncertainty and competing constraints • Exceptional communication and influence skills, with the ability to build alignment among senior technical, product, and business stakeholders without relying on authority • A commitment to growing other engineers through mentorship, technical feedback, and a culture of rigorous, inclusive, and data-informed decision making Preferred qualifications • Experience in tax, financial technology, payments, accounting, financial reporting, or another domain where correctness and regulatory complexity are central • Experience working directly with large enterprise customers and translating their complex requirements into durable platform capabilities • Experience designing robust integrations with external systems and APIs, or leading platform work that spans backend services, data, and user-facing experiences