Lead Systems Engineer

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

IaaS Systems and Storage & Engineering (ISSE) team is part of the Operations & Infrastructure technology organization at Visa. Our vision, mission and purpose are summarized as following:

Vision - Deliver best-in-class Infrastructure on demand everywhere.  

Mission - Engineer and build reliable and secure infrastructure for all type of workloads in Private/ Hybrid Cloud, utilizing open and innovative technologies at the right unit cost.

Purpose - increase innovation velocity of developers and reduce infrastructure maintenance overhead

These are the guiding principles for the important work we do every day and build toward the overall vision of Visa – The best way to pay and be paid for everyone, everywhere.  

Essential Functions

You will be part of a team of cloud infrastructure engineers & architects who adopt, integrate & engineer industry leading technologies and management solutions for the on-prem container platform and public clouds, focusing on Kubernetes, microservices architecture, and cloud technologies. You will assume the total ownership of the solutions we provide for our customers to ensure availability, performance, security, and reliability of the applications running on the infrastructure we engineer, implement and support.  You will also define, advocate, and deliver standard foundational services for Visa public cloud implementation, closely collaborate with stakeholders to design & implement solutions with strong security posture, deliver functionalities with optimized cost, and improve developer productivity. As a team, we will do these all at global scale. Continuous, iterative improvements in our process, technology, tools, and automation will be essential to meet those goals.

The ideal candidate is technology savvy with good knowledge of Linux operating systems, container, Kubernetes and Microservices architecture. Have extensive experience driving design and implementation of infrastructure solutions on one of the major public clouds, such as AWS, GCP & Azure. Proficient in programming/scripting in Golang, Python, Ansible or Terraform. Familiar with CI/CD for development and deployment, with experience working on opensource projects, contributing, and committing the code. You will play a leading role to deliver secure, highly available and scalable infrastructure solution and associated automation. 

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 7 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 4 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Systems, Computer Engineering, Electrical or other relevant engineering field
• 10 years of experience as DevOps engineer automating infrastructure deployment
• Experience managing production container ecosystems – Docker, Kubernetes, Service Mesh (Istio or Linkerd), CNI(Calico, Cilium) and CSI drivers
• Proven record of defining technology roadmap, executing defined technology strategies and driving adoption across a large enterprise
• Experience architecting, designing, developing, and implementing cloud solutions on one of the public clouds (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Extensive experience automating system tasks and infrastructure using a scripting language (Golang, and Python), with configuration management tools (Ansible), service registry and discovery tools (Consul and Vault, etcd), infrastructure orchestration tools (Ansible, and Terraform), and automated imaging tools (Packer)
• Experience designing, building, and/or running production systems in cloud or migrating to the cloud such as AWS, practicing infrastructure as code, continuous integration and automated deployment, automated testing, autoscaling, and self-healing
• Experience leading, enabling modernization efforts for applications adopting modern approaches (e.g., REST APIs, micro-services, etc.)
• Experience using and optimizing monitoring and observability systems (Sysdig, Prometheus, Grafana), log aggregation systems (ELK, Splunk, Fluentd), familiar with emerging OpenTelemeter standards
• Deep understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle including Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline architecture (Jenkins, GitLab, Drone) including deployments into Kubernetes environments using tools such as ArgoCD or Flux
• Experience with network and application protocols (e.g. TCP, HTTP) and databases, including one RDBMS and one columnar or NoSQL store
• Able to understand the security tools and best practices: CIS Benchmarking, OS hardening, vulnerability scanning, system auditing
• Networking experience both within Linux and with Cisco or Juniper network routers and switches
• Strong analytical skills, able to work independently to troubleshoot, solve complex engineering problems. Make independent judgments/decisions within established guidelines
• Experience performing full stack load testing to identify and address hardware, network, system, or application bottlenecks
• Self-starter possessing excellent time management skills, able to manage multiple activities simultaneously while requiring little or no oversight and/or direction
• Proven ability to lead with passion and execute vision with little guidance
• Communicate well with others both verbally and in writing and be able to effectively interact with peers, management and other outside contacts
• High degree of initiative and sense of urgency, comfortable with ambiguity as needs change on a regular basis

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 a new hire into this position is 147,400.00 to 213,800.00 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.