# Senior Engineering Manager, Payments
**Company:** [Patreon](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/patreon)
Senior Engineering Manager leading Patreon's high-impact Payments team responsible for $10B+ in creator earnings. This leadership role oversees 10-12 engineers building mission-critical payment infrastructure, checkout experiences, and payout systems while partnering with Product, Design, and Finance stakeholders. The ideal candidate brings 10+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years managing engineering teams, deep expertise in payments/fintech infrastructure, and a track record of shipping complex, regulated systems at scale.
**Role:** Engineering Manager
**Seniority:** Manager
**Locations:** San Francisco
**Salary:** 296000–444000 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/patreon/f145bbff-8927-48dc-8f48-290f7978a752)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/patreon/senior-engineering-manager-payments
---
## Responsibilities

- Technical Vision & Roadmap Leadership: Partner with Product, Design, and Product Marketing leads to establish technical direction and prioritize the Payments team roadmap. Define strategic initiatives including legacy billing deprecation, payments reliability improvements, and local payment methods expansion while balancing new product innovation with operational excellence.
- Infrastructure Execution & Reliability: Drive major infrastructure initiatives and day-to-day product delivery to enhance payment processing reliability. Champion operational excellence by improving payment infrastructure efficiency, maintaining guardrail metrics for Brand Trust and Total Payment Volume, and ensuring PCI compliance across all payment processing systems.
- Team Management & Development: Own hiring, performance management, and career development for a 10-12 person engineering team. Build a high-performing, craft-focused culture that attracts top talent, provides clear growth paths, and maintains team engagement while scaling team capabilities for increasing business demands.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Represent the Payments organization in cross-functional planning with Finance, Risk, Support, and Go-To-Market teams. Collaborate with other engineering teams to ensure cohesive payment experiences across product surfaces. Facilitate knowledge sharing and alignment across dependencies.
- Strategic Build-vs-Buy Decisions: Evaluate and make strategic decisions regarding payment processing vendors, compliance solutions, and payout infrastructure. Manage vendor partnerships and negotiations while assessing whether to build, buy, or integrate third-party solutions based on cost, scalability, regulatory requirements, and strategic fit.
- Product Excellence & User Experience: Drive high-craft user experience design for both creator payout interfaces and fan-facing checkout flows. Champion experimentation-driven approaches to product optimization, leverage data analytics to inform roadmap decisions, and maintain commitment to building products creators and fans love using.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Computer Science or Related Degree","description":"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience demonstrating advanced software engineering capabilities."}

### technical

- {"name":"Payment Processing Orchestration","description":"Technical proficiency with payment processing systems, payment service provider integrations, and orchestration patterns that support multiple payment methods and compliance frameworks."}
- {"name":"Billing Infrastructure","description":"Hands-on experience designing and operating billing systems including recurring billing engines, invoice generation, dunning strategies, and billing reconciliation systems."}
- {"name":"PCI Compliance & Security","description":"Working knowledge of PCI DSS compliance requirements, secure payment data handling, tokenization, encryption, and security architecture for payment systems."}
- {"name":"Data-Driven Decision Making","description":"Proficiency with analytics, experimentation frameworks (A/B testing), and data engineering practices to inform product decisions and measure business impact."}
- {"name":"Distributed Systems Architecture","description":"Strong foundation in designing reliable, scalable distributed systems that handle high transaction throughput, eventual consistency, and failure scenarios common in payment infrastructure."}

### experience

- {"name":"Engineering Leadership Experience","description":"Minimum 5+ years of hands-on engineering team management experience, demonstrating ability to hire, develop, and retain high-performing engineers while maintaining technical credibility and staying involved in architecture decisions."}
- {"name":"Software Engineering Tenure","description":"10+ years of total software engineering experience across various domains, with proven ability to architect and ship complex systems at scale."}
- {"name":"Payments & Financial Systems Expertise","description":"Direct, hands-on experience building or managing payments, billing, or financial infrastructure at significant scale. Deep understanding of PCI compliance requirements, payment processing and orchestration systems, chargeback handling, transaction reconciliation, and adjacent regulated fintech domains."}
- {"name":"Complex Domain Mastery","description":"Proven track record shipping high-impact, end-to-end product work in complex, mission-critical domains. Experience navigating regulatory constraints, managing reliability requirements, and balancing technical debt with feature velocity."}
- {"name":"Cross-Functional Leadership","description":"Demonstrated ability building healthy, trusting relationships across Product, Design, business partners, and engineering teams. Experience collaborating daily with non-technical stakeholders to translate business needs into technical solutions."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Engineering Team Leadership","description":"Proven ability to hire, develop, and manage engineering teams. Experience with performance management, career development, and creating psychological safety for team members to do their best work."}
- {"name":"Payment Systems Architecture","description":"Deep technical knowledge of payment processing, billing systems, payment orchestration, and fintech infrastructure architecture."}
- {"name":"Regulatory & Compliance Navigation","description":"Experience working with PCI compliance, financial regulations, and managing stakeholder relationships with compliance and risk teams."}
- {"name":"Vendor & Partnership Management","description":"Skills evaluating third-party payment processors, managing vendor relationships, and making strategic build-vs-buy decisions for critical infrastructure."}
- {"name":"Product Strategy & Roadmap Planning","description":"Ability to partner with product managers to define vision, prioritize initiatives, and balance new features with infrastructure investments and technical debt management."}
- {"name":"Operational Excellence","description":"Commitment to reliability engineering, observability, incident response, and building systems that users trust implicitly."}
- {"name":"Cross-Functional Collaboration","description":"Strong communication skills to partner effectively with Product, Design, Finance, Risk, Support, and Marketing teams in a matrix organization."}

### preferred

- {"name":"International Payments Experience","description":"Hands-on experience with international payment expansion including local payment methods, multi-currency processing, currency conversion, and cross-border compliance challenges."}
- {"name":"Marketplace & Creator Economy Knowledge","description":"Background building products in marketplace, creator economy, or subscription-based business models where creator-fan relationships drive network effects."}
- {"name":"Fintech Infrastructure Depth","description":"Additional experience in adjacent fintech domains such as payouts, wallet systems, ACH/wire transfer processing, or money movement infrastructure."}
- {"name":"High-Volume Transaction Systems","description":"Experience architecting and managing systems handling millions of daily transactions with stringent availability and latency requirements."}
- {"name":"Analytics & Experimentation Leadership","description":"Track record championing data-driven product development, designing and running A/B tests, and building analytics infrastructure to measure business impact."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"Stripe/PayPal APIs","description":"Payment gateway integrations for processing creator and fan payments across multiple payment methods."}
- {"name":"PCI Compliance Tools","description":"Security and compliance management solutions for maintaining payment data protection standards."}
- {"name":"Datadog/New Relic","description":"Observability and monitoring platforms for tracking payment system reliability and performance metrics."}
- {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration for managing payment microservices at scale."}
- {"name":"Apache Kafka","description":"Event streaming for asynchronous payment processing and event-driven architecture."}

### others

- {"name":"Microservices Architecture","description":"Distributed system design patterns for payment processing, billing, and payout services."}
- {"name":"Event-Driven Architecture","description":"Asynchronous processing patterns for handling payment state transitions and notifications."}
- {"name":"RESTful APIs & gRPC","description":"API design and implementation for payment service integrations and inter-team collaboration."}
- {"name":"CI/CD & DevOps","description":"Continuous integration and deployment pipelines for safely releasing payment system updates."}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Primary relational database for transactional consistency in payment systems and billing records."}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"Caching and session management layer for high-performance payment processing."}
- {"name":"Elasticsearch","description":"Search and analytics infrastructure for payment transaction analysis and reporting."}

### languages

- {"name":"Python","description":"Used for backend systems and data processing in payment infrastructure."}
- {"name":"Java","description":"Common for large-scale distributed payment processing systems and fintech platforms."}
- {"name":"JavaScript/TypeScript","description":"Used for building modern payment checkout experiences and creator-facing interfaces."}

### frameworks

- {"name":"Spring Boot","description":"Enterprise framework for building scalable payment processing microservices."}
- {"name":"React","description":"Frontend framework for building responsive, interactive checkout and payout dashboards."}
- {"name":"Django","description":"Python web framework for rapid development of payment platform features."}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Equity Compensation","description":"Competitive equity plans aligned with company growth and your contribution to Patreon's mission."}
- {"name":"Comprehensive Healthcare","description":"Medical, dental, and vision coverage with company contribution to support you and your family's health and wellness."}
- {"name":"Flexible Time Off","description":"Flexible paid time off policy designed to respect work-life balance and support recharge and recovery."}
- {"name":"Company Holidays & Recharge Days","description":"Designated company holidays plus additional recharge days throughout the year to disconnect and rejuvenate."}
- {"name":"Commuter & Lifestyle Benefits","description":"Commuter benefits for office-based employees and lifestyle stipends to support personal wellness and wellbeing."}
- {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Learning and development stipends to invest in continuous skill growth, conferences, certifications, and training programs."}
- {"name":"Creator Benefits","description":"Patronage benefits providing exclusive access to creator content on the Patreon platform."}
- {"name":"Parental Leave","description":"Comprehensive parental leave policy supporting family building and bonding with new family members."}
- {"name":"401k Plan","description":"Retirement savings plan with company matching to support long-term financial security."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 280000
- **min:** 220000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

- {"name":"Initial Recruiter Conversation","description":"30-45 minute call with a Patreon recruiter to discuss your background, interest in the role, and alignment with Patreon's mission. This is an opportunity to ask questions about the team, company culture, and role expectations."}
- {"name":"Technical Leadership Discussion","description":"45-60 minute conversation with the Head of Engineering or VP Engineering to explore your technical depth, system design philosophy, and experience leading payments or fintech teams. Be prepared to discuss specific payment infrastructure challenges you've solved."}
- {"name":"Product & Cross-Functional Collaboration","description":"45-60 minute interview with the Director of Product and relevant Product Managers to assess your ability to partner cross-functionally, understand product strategy, and balance technical and business priorities. Discuss a complex product decision you've navigated."}
- {"name":"Team Dynamics & People Leadership","description":"45-60 minute conversation with current or former direct reports (if available) or peer engineering leaders to evaluate your management philosophy, approach to team development, and ability to create psychological safety and high performance."}
- {"name":"Payments Domain Deep Dive","description":"60 minute technical discussion focused on payments infrastructure, compliance, reliability, and operational excellence. Expect scenarios involving PCI compliance, payment processing decisions, vendor evaluations, and handling payment system incidents."}
- {"name":"Executive Alignment","description":"30-45 minute conversation with Chief Technology Officer or Finance/Operations leadership to discuss alignment on strategic priorities, business impact metrics, and how the Payments team contributes to Patreon's creator-focused mission."}
- {"name":"Final Discussion & Offer","description":"After positive conversations, you'll have a final discussion with the hiring manager to address any remaining questions, discuss compensation and benefits, work arrangement details, and next steps for onboarding."}

## Full description
Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their fans and build a lasting business including: paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live video, and selling to fans directly with one-time purchases.

Ultimately our goal is simple: fund the creative class. And we're leaders in that space, with:

* $10 billion+ generated by creators since Patreon's inception
* 100 million+ free memberships for fans who may not be ready to pay just yet, and
* 25 million+ paid memberships on Patreon today.

Patreon is looking for an Engineering Leader to lead our Payments team. This is one of the most consequential parts of Patreon's business: the systems that let creators earn a living and get paid reliably, and that let fans support them with a seamless, trustworthy checkout experience.

**About the Team**

The Payments team owns the 1) Payments Infrastructure which includes bill processing, compliance, vendor integrations, pay-in and payout methods, 2) Payments Experience which includes fan-facing checkout, and creator-facing payout experience, 3) Support & Internal tooling used across Patreon to run the business and support creators and fans. The team consists of 10-12 engineers that partner closely with dedicated Product, Design, and Product Marketing leads.

**About the Role**

As an Engineering Leader of the Payments teams, you will be partnering with product, operations, design, and data to craft a vision and roadmap to deliver a high quality payments product for our creators and their fans. You will be overseeing a team of software engineers to realize that vision.

* Set technical direction and roadmap priorities in tight partnership with Product, Design, and PMM leads
* Drive execution on major infrastructure initiatives (legacy billing deprecation, payments reliability, local payment methods expansion) alongside day-to-day product delivery
* Champion a culture of operational excellence; Improve reliability and efficiency of payments infrastructure, and hold the line on guardrail metrics like Brand Trust and Total Payment Volume.
* Manage and grow the team; own hiring, performance, and career development
* Collaborate with other teams so payments experiences feel cohesive across other surfaces product areas
* Make the call on build-vs-buy and vendor partnership decisions for payment processing, compliance, and payout infrastructure
* Represent Payments in cross-functional planning with Finance, Risk, Support, and GTM stakeholders

**About You**

* 10+ years of software engineering experience and at 5+ years of experience managing an engineering team
* Direct experience with payments, billing, or financial infrastructure at scale — you understand PCI compliance, payment processing/orchestration, chargebacks, and reconciliation, or adjacent regulated-fintech domains
* Comfort owning both the "keep the lights on" reliability work and new product bets in the same portfolio
* Experience navigating vendor relationships and build-vs-buy decisions for critical infrastructure
* Proven track record shipping high‑impact, end‑to‑end product work in complex domains (ideally payments, fintech, or other mission‑critical systems)
* Comfortable people managing but stepping in and identifying when more hands on effort is needed to drive the right outcomes
* Strong cross-functional partnership skills — you'll work daily with Product, Design, Finance, and Support leads
* Deep commitment to building high craft user experiences for both creators and fans
* Experience working with experimentation driven approaches to optimize product surfaces and use of data to inform roadmap decisions
* Skilled at building healthy, trusting relationships across Product, Design, business partners, and other engineering teams.
* Nice to Have

  * Experience with international payments expansion (local payment methods, currency conversion, cross-border compliance)
  * Background in marketplace or creator-economy businesses

**About Patreon**

Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values come to life every day in our work. Through this work, our Patronauts:

* **Put Creators First |** _They’re the reason we’re here. When creators win, we win._
* **Build with Craft |** _We sign our name to every deliverable, just like the creators we serve._
* **Make it Happen |** _We don’t quit. We learn and deliver._
* **Win Together |** _We grow as individuals. We win as a team._

We hire talented and passionate people from different backgrounds because workplace diversity and inclusion is critical to our ability to serve creators worldwide. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t match with every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we’d love to hear from you.

_Patreon is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the interview process, please let us know via email at accommodations@patreon._

_Patreon offers a competitive benefits package including and not limited to salary, equity plans, healthcare, flexible time off, company holidays and recharge days, commuter benefits, lifestyle stipends, learning and development stipends, patronage, parental leave, and 401k plan with matching._

_Patreon operates under a hybrid work model, where employees based in office locations are expected to come into the office two days per week, excluding sick time and paid leave. The goal of this policy is to be intentional about the in-person time we spend together to strengthen the feeling of community at Patreon. Candidates hired into remote-eligible roles are not expected to meet the same requirements._

_At Patreon, we believe in fair and transparent pay. In compliance with New York and California pay transparency laws, we are sharing the expected salary range for this role._

_The posted salary range is dependent on the location and the level. This range may encompass multiple levels within the role’s job family. The final offer will be based on candidate’s experience, skills, competencies, and geographic location, aligning with the appropriate job level within Patreon’s leveling framework. For remote employees located outside CA and NY, salary may vary based on location and local market conditions._

_Patreon reserves the right to modify or update compensation and benefits at any time._