Chief Software Engineer

The Value‑Added Services Product Development (VAS PD) team drives diversification of Visa’s revenue through differentiated, network‑agnostic products that extend the power of the Visa ecosystem. Within VAS, the Risk and Security Solutions (RAS) team delivers mission‑critical, AI‑driven risk, fraud, authentication, and identity platforms serving issuers, merchants, fintechs, and partners at global scale.

The Chief Software Engineer in the RAS Product Development team is a senior technical authority responsible for defining and executing enterprise‑scale technology strategy, cloud‑native architecture, and engineering excellence aligned to business outcomes. This role provides deep technical leadership across Acceptance and Authentication Risk platforms (Visa Enhanced Authentication, Visa Secure, Cardinal, Decision Manager) and Identity platforms (Identity Graph and Device Intelligence).

This position requires hands‑on expertise in public cloud, distributed systems, security‑first design, and Generative / Agentic AI, with a strong focus on developer productivity, platform leverage, and client‑facing innovation.

Essential Functions

• Define, own, and evolve the end‑to‑end technical vision, architecture, and execution strategy for RAS platforms, ensuring alignment with business objectives while accelerating innovation, scalability, and time‑to‑market.
• Architect, design, and implement high‑throughput, low‑latency, highly available (99.999%+) distributed systems supporting real‑time transaction processing, authentication, and identity services at global scale.
• Lead the enterprise adoption of Generative AI and Agentic AI to achieve 10X gains in developer productivity, including AI‑assisted coding, testing, observability, security analysis, and autonomous agents for platform operations, as well as AI‑powered, client‑facing product capabilities.
• Establish and institutionalize modern software engineering best practices, including CI/CD automation, DevSecOps, Infrastructure‑as‑Code, and policy‑driven governance to improve quality, velocity, and operational resilience across the SSDLC.
• Drive cloud‑first, cloud‑native architecture across AWS and/or Azure, optimizing for resiliency, elasticity, performance, cost efficiency, and zero‑trust security using managed services, containers, and serverless technologies.
• Actively contribute to critical path initiatives by developing core frameworks, shared services, automation platforms, reference architectures, and proof‑of‑concepts to validate emerging technologies and accelerate product delivery.
• Provide technical leadership at scale, setting architectural standards, engineering KPIs, and execution priorities while enabling high‑performing teams to deliver complex, multi‑year platform roadmaps.
• Partner cross‑functionally with security, privacy, risk, compliance, governance, and business stakeholders to deliver compliant, secure, and resilient solutions meeting strict non‑functional requirements and regulatory expectations.
• Translate complex technical strategies into clear, executive‑level narratives, influencing senior leadership, product management, and external partners through data‑driven decision‑making.
• Mentor and coach senior engineers, staff engineers, and engineering managers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, innovation, and knowledge sharing through design reviews, tech talks, and one‑on‑one mentorship.
• Implement rigorous engineering excellence practices across design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and incident response to uphold platform reliability, security, and architectural integrity.
• Exemplify and reinforce Visa’s Leadership Principles by acting as an owner, promoting collaboration, and executing with operational and technical excellence.
• This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

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

Basic Qualifications:

• 12+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 9 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 15+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 15 or more years of experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 12 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, or MD), PhD with 9+ years of experience
• Technical Expertise: 15+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in architecting large‑scale, cloud‑native, distributed systems. Strong proficiency in Java, Python, GoLang, and modern frameworks such as Spring Boot, Node.js, and React.
• Generative AI & Agentic AI: Demonstrated success applying Generative AI and autonomous agents to deliver order‑of‑magnitude productivity improvements and differentiated product features. Experience integrating LLMs, vector databases, prompt engineering, RAG, and AI governance into production platforms.
• Cloud & DevOps: Hands‑on experience with AWS and/or Azure, including containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), serverless architectures, and CI/CD pipelines with strong DevSecOps practices.
• Architectural Leadership: Deep understanding of architectural patterns, trade‑off analysis, and long‑term platform evolution. Experience designing and operating active‑active, multi‑region, globally resilient systems.
• Hands‑On Leadership: Willingness and ability to contribute directly to production code, frameworks, and prototypes to validate ideas, unblock teams, and accelerate adoption of emerging technologies.• API & Integration: Extensive experience with RESTful and gRPC APIs, microservices architectures, service meshes, and event‑driven systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub, streaming platforms). Rust knowledge is a plus.
• Security Expertise: Strong foundation in API security, cryptography, data encryption, key management, and HSMs. Proven experience implementing security‑by‑design, zero‑trust, and defense‑in‑depth practices in regulated environments.
• Data & Caching: Proficiency with SQL and NoSQL data stores and distributed caching technologies such as Redis. Experience designing data models for high‑scale, low‑latency systems.
• SSDLC Automation: Proven ability to automate the entire SSDLC using automated testing, security scanning, quality gates, observability, and release orchestration to improve speed, reliability, and compliance.
• Leadership & Communication: Exceptional ability to lead, influence, and mentor engineering organizations. Strong communication skills to articulate complex technical concepts to executives, clients, and diverse technical audiences.

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 195,800.00 to 313,500.00 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.