Who we are

About Stripe

We are looking for a leader to own one of our core databases here at
Stripe. If you are someone who finds solving complex distributed systems
challenges just as exciting as hiring and mentoring a quickly growing
organization then this role is for you.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

Build the platform to store all of Stripe’s online data.

Stripe’s infrastructure powers businesses all over the world. We process
payments, run marketplaces, detect fraud, help entrepreneurs start an
internet business from anywhere in the world, build world-class
developer-friendly APIs, and more.  Every request we process is very
important to everyone involved  and Stripe’s availability and
reliability are critical because our users’ businesses depend on us.Our
Online Database organization provides the core database infrastructure
that’s at the heart of all real-time critical payment requests to the
Stripe API. We architect, build, maintain, and operate the underlying
database infrastructure that enables six 9s (that’s right, 6) of
availability for all critical Stripe payment APIs. 

Our system is the record of truth for nearly all of Stripe’s online
data. It must meet the highest levels of security, availability,
consistency, performance, and durability in the face of our
ever-increasing growth. We are continually thinking about ways to
evolve  our infrastructure to support Stripe’s growing needs to build
the best-in-class distributed database platform -- including ways to
work around the CAP theorem!

We provide a product portfolio of key-value, relational, caching, and
distributed consensus offerings. 

What you’ll do

We are looking for a leader to own one of our core databases here at
Stripe. If you are someone who finds solving complex distributed systems
challenges just as exciting as hiring and mentoring a quickly growing
organization then this role is for you.

You will:

• Be directly responsible for defining and implementing the database
  strategy that will power Stripe for the next five years
  
• Work with engineers and other leaders  to improve our database
  platform, primarily  in the areas of availability, performance, and
  security
  
• Support the engineering team in achieving a high level of technical
  quality, reliability, and developer satisfaction
  
• Manage processes to help the team do its best work and engage
  effectively with the rest of Stripe
  
• Recruit great engineers and managers in collaboration with Stripe’s
  recruiting team.
  
• Mentor and coach managers to create healthy and well-executing teams
  
• Develop engineers on the team, enabling them to advance in their
  careers
  
• Contribute to engineering-wide initiatives 
  

Responsibilities 

• We look at Stripe as a constant work in progress and the same is true
  of our people; for all of us, we believe the best is yet to come.
  We’re here to support each other in our curiosity and creativity –
  which we pursue through thoughtful discussion and knowledge-sharing
  among a diverse set of peers and colleagues.
  
• We encourage all engineers to transition teams once every year and a
  half and also take on short-term projects with other teams across
  Stripe. This enables engineers to learn how different parts of Stripe
  work while also establishing stronger ties and cross-pollination
  between groups.
  
• We contribute to existing open-source projects and the people working
  on them, and we release several tools as open-source.
  
• We want to work in a company of warm, inclusive people who treat their
  colleagues exceptionally well. The kind of people who are committed to
  going out of their way to help other Stripes in the short-term and
  pushing them to improve over the long-term (by helping them to get
  better at what they do).
  
• We’re a highly cross-functional organization and view that as part of
  the fun: we design our space to encourage as much collaboration as
  possible. We have long tables in the kitchen for a reason (to enable
  everyone to meet new people and learn from them). We also have a
  culture of transparency that we carry through to email communication,
  ensuring that Stripes all around the world have the information they
  need to make good local decisions.
  

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

• We’re looking for someone who has: 

  • * Managed teams that have shipped and operated large scale, highly
    available distributed systems, with database experience (MongoDB,
    MySQL, Redis, Memcached, etcd, zookeeper) a plus
    
  • Extreme customer focus, committed to investing in partnerships
    with other Stripe engineers to establish empathy and understand
    their use-cases
    
  • A genuine enjoyment of learning and diving into the nuts-and-bolts
    of how things work, with the ability to question and direct
    architectural decisions
    
  • The ability to work well cross-functionally, and the ability to
    think rigorously and make hard decisions and tradeoffs
    
  • A strong quantitative and analytical background 
    
  • The ability to thrive on a high level of autonomy and
    responsibility
    
  • The desire to encourage a healthy, inclusive work environment
    that’s both supportive and challenging
    
  • Successfully recruited and built great teams
    
  • Experience managing teams of 50+ engineers