Staff Software Engineer, Payments & Billing, Consumer Monetization

OpenAI

. Extend billing capabilities and improve integrations and state consistency across systems .

Posted 9/23/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • United StatesLead💰 $266,000 - $445,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

Use this summary to align your resume positioning with the role.

Demonstrates expertise in designing and operating backend systems with a focus on billing, payments, and subscriptions. Capable of leading technical initiatives, integrating complex dependencies, and ensuring system reliability and correctness.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Technical OwnershipBackend System DesignPayments IntegrationData ModelingDistributed Systems Experience

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Backend System DesignData ModelingState TransitionsIdempotencyConsistencyConcurrencyFailure RecoveryAsynchronous Event HandlingAPI DevelopmentOperational Tooling

Soft Skills

Technical LeadershipMentorshipCommunication

Tools & Technologies

Payment ProcessorsBilling SystemsSubscription ServicesE-commerce PlatformsObservability Tools

Industry Keywords

PaymentsBillingSubscriptionsE-commerceTransactional Platforms

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Distributed Systems

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Extend billing capabilities and improve integrations and state consistency across systems
Orchestrate purchases, renewals, plan changes, cancellations, and recovery
Expand payment capabilities through processor integrations, routing, and broader payment-method coverage
Integrate risk and integrity controls into purchasing flows
Architect and build shared services and APIs for billing, subscriptions, and payments
Design lifecycle orchestration and state synchronization across internal services, billing vendors, payment processors, and app stores
Solve correctness and recovery problems involving asynchronous events, partial failures, retries, and reconciliation
Improve payment success and resilience through processor integrations, routing, and recovery strategies
Build testing, observability, and operational tooling
Lead initiatives from problem definition and technical design through implementation, rollout, and ongoing operation
Partner with Product, Finance, Operations, and engineering teams
Provide technical leadership through hands-on development, design reviews, and mentorship
Set technical direction and connect architecture decisions to customer and business outcomes

Requirements

What you’ll need

Demonstrated technical ownership at Staff level or beyond, shaping architecture and delivering substantial initiatives across teams
Deep experience designing, building, and operating backend or distributed systems in production
Strong understanding of data modeling, state transitions, idempotency, consistency, concurrency, and failure recovery
Experience building systems where correctness and reliability are critical
Experience integrating with external providers and complex dependencies
Strong technical judgment with product and business understanding
Experience communicating with technical and non-technical partners
Hands-on engineering experience while mentoring other engineers
Experience in payments, billing, subscriptions, memberships, e-commerce, offers, promotions, or other transactional platforms is particularly valuable
Exceptional distributed systems experience may substitute for domain experience

Benefits

Comp & perks

Equity
Performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees
Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
401(k) retirement plan with employer match
Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents)
Paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
Flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
13+ paid company holidays
Multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge
Paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend
Daily meals in offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Charitable donation matching and wellness stipends may also be provided
Immigration and sponsorship support may be provided based on individual circumstances