Senior Staff Software Engineer

Job description

As passionate about our people as we are about our mission. Why Join Q2? Q2 is a leading provider of digital banking and lending solutions to banks, credit unions, alternative finance companies, and fintechs in the U.S. and internationally. Our mission is simple: build strong and diverse communities through innovative financial technology—and we do that by empowering our people to help create success for our customers. What Makes Q2 Special? Being as passionate about our people as we are about our mission. We celebrate our employees in many ways, including our “Circle of Awesomeness” award ceremony and day of employee celebration among others! We invest in the growth and development of our team members through ongoing learning opportunities, mentorship programs, internal mobility, and meaningful leadership relationships. We also know that nothing builds trust and collaboration like having fun. We hold an annual Dodgeball for Charity event at our Q2 Stadium in Austin, inviting other local companies to play, and community organizations we support to raise money and awareness together. Senior Staff Engineer Role Summary We are seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to lead strategic initiatives across customer-facing product engineering teams building next-generation digital banking experiences. This role combines deep technical expertise, architectural leadership, AI-native engineering practices, and operational excellence to deliver scalable, secure, resilient, and intuitive products that drive customer value. You will partner closely with Product, Design, Data, Security, and Engineering leaders to define long-term architectural strategy, guide complex technical decisions, accelerate product delivery, and enable teams to build intelligent, customer-focused products at scale. Key Responsibilities Architecture, Technical Strategy & Product Engineering Define and drive long-term architecture strategy for customer-facing digital banking products and shared product capabilities. Translate product vision, customer needs, and business goals into scalable, resilient, secure, and maintainable engineering solutions. Lead architecture and design reviews, driving alignment on trade-offs, engineering standards, scalability, extensibility, and long-term technical direction. Establish reusable architectural patterns, APIs, domain boundaries, integration standards, and engineering conventions across teams. Drive modernization initiatives that reduce technical complexity, improve maintainability, and accelerate product delivery. Ensure architectural decisions balance customer experience, delivery velocity, reliability, compliance, and future scalability. Influence product roadmaps and investment decisions through technical strategy, architectural foresight, and scalability considerations. AI-Native Product Engineering & Engineering Excellence Drive adoption of AI-native capabilities that improve customer experiences, operational efficiency, personalization, and developer productivity. Partner with product and engineering teams to identify opportunities for intelligent automation, conversational experiences, predictive insights, agentic workflows, and AI-assisted engineering practices. Improve engineering productivity through automation, CI/CD, tooling, reusable frameworks, and AI-assisted development workflows. Establish standards for testing, observability, resiliency, security, scalability, accessibility, and operational excellence. Define SLAs/SLOs, reliability standards, and operational readiness practices for business-critical customer journeys. Lead incident response, postmortems, and continuous improvement initiatives focused on customer impact and product stability. Ensure responsible AI adoption through governance, privacy, explainability, security, and risk management practices. Guide adoption of modern AI patterns including LLM integrations, RAG-based architectures, intelligent automation, and enterprise AI governance. Collaboration, Leadership & Organizational Impact Drive alignment across Product Engineering, Product Management, Design, Security, Compliance, Operations, and Executive Leadership. Communicate architectural trade-offs, customer impact, and technical risks clearly to both technical and business stakeholders. Foster a product engineering culture focused on ownership, innovation, simplicity, scalability, and customer trust. Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders across teams, scaling engineering excellence through coaching, architectural guidance, and reusable patterns. Encourage strong engineering collaboration through architecture reviews, technical documentation, shared standards, and engineering communities. Product & Business Impact Align engineering investments with customer outcomes, product strategy, operational metrics, compliance requirements, and company OKRs. Use customer insights, experimentation data, analytics, and product health metrics to guide prioritization and technical trade-offs. Influence strategic investment decisions through technical expertise, architecture strategy, scalability planning, and customer value analysis. Deliver secure, resilient, intelligent, and customer-focused digital banking experiences that strengthen engagement and trust. 12+ years of software engineering experience with expertise building scalable cloud-native products and distributed systems. Proven experience operating as a Staff, Principal, or Senior Staff Engineer within product engineering organizations. Strong experience defining architecture strategy for large-scale customer-facing applications and distributed systems. Deep expertise in frontend and backend technologies, cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, API design, observability, resiliency, security, CI/CD, and operational excellence, with experience building AI-native applications leveraging LLMs, agentic workflows, intelligent automation, RAG-based architectures, and AI-assisted engineering workflows. Experience building and scaling customer-facing products in fintech, SaaS, or enterprise environments. Exceptional technical leadership, communication, mentorship, and cross-functional collaboration skills. Strong product mindset with ability to connect architecture and engineering strategy to customer and business outcomes. Preferred Qualifications Experience in fintech, digital banking, payments, lending, fraud, or regulated enterprise environments. Experience leading large-scale modernization or architectural transformation initiatives. Expertise in AI-assisted product experiences, intelligent automation, personalization systems, or enterprise AI governance. Experience driving resiliency engineering, operational transformation, and engineering standardization initiatives. What Success Looks Like Scalable, resilient, and maintainable architectures adopted across product engineering teams. Faster product delivery through reusable engineering patterns, AI adoption, and architectural simplification. Improved developer productivity, engineering quality, and operational excellence. Strong cross-functional alignment between Engineering, Product, Design, Security, and Operations. Successful adoption of AI-native product engineering practices. Strong mentorship, technical influence, and organizational impact. Delivery of secure, intelligent, and customer-centric digital banking experiences. This position requires fluent written and oral communication in English. Health & Wellness Hybrid Work Opportunities Flexible Time Off Career Development & Mentoring Programs Health & Wellness Benefits, including competitive health insurance offerings and generous paid parental leave for eligible new parents Community Volunteering & Company Philanthropy Programs Employee Peer Recognition Programs – “You Earned it” Click here to find out more about the benefits we offer. Our Culture & Commitment: We’re proud to foster a supportive, inclusive environment where career growth, collaboration, and wellness are prioritized. And our benefits go beyond healthcare—offering resources for physical, mental, and professional well-being. Click here to find out more about the benefits we offer. Q2 employees are encouraged to give back through volunteer work and nonprofit support through our Spark Program ( see more ). We believe in making an impact—in the industry and in the community. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or veteran status.