Principal Software Engineer - Banking and Money Movement

Position Overview

Marqeta is seeking a talented Principal Software Engineer to join our Banking and Money Movement Team. In this highly strategic role, you will independently identify and deliver software solutions through a series of milestones, focusing on specific product areas or multi-component systems. You will own and deliver projects aligned with quarterly goals and proactively identify solutions to ambiguous, open-ended problems. This position requires deep technical expertise combined with leadership and influence across the entire engineering organization.

The Banking and Money Movement engineering team is responsible for developing and optimizing financial services, including account creation, transaction processing, payment systems, banking integrations, reporting, and reconciliation. We collaborate to ensure secure, efficient, and innovative solutions that meet regulatory standards and enhance user experiences in moving money.

Work Location

This role operates on a Flexible First model and can be performed remotely within Ontario or British Columbia.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the architecture of mission-critical systems, setting long-term technical direction and ensuring scalability, security, and sustainability across the platform.
• Lead large-scale, cross-functional initiatives spanning multiple teams and domains, ensuring alignment with business priorities and delivering high-impact outcomes.
• Serve as a technical advisor to senior leadership, providing insight on technical risks, trade-offs, and innovation opportunities that shape product and business strategy.
• Raise the technical bar across the organization by mentoring engineers at all levels, fostering a culture of technical rigor, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Partner with engineering managers and product leaders to ensure roadmap decisions align with architectural goals and long-term scalability.
• Actively influence and contribute to the creation and evolution of the company’s engineering principles, tooling, and standards.
• Conduct technical deep-dives into system architecture, identifying opportunities for performance improvements, technical simplification, and operational efficiency.
• Represent engineering in key cross-functional forums, helping the organization navigate complex decisions around infrastructure, platform capabilities, and product development.
• Act as a steward of engineering quality—promoting clean code, reliable systems, robust testing, and sustainable development practices.
• Drive innovation across teams, leading explorations of emerging technologies and ensuring Marqeta remains on the forefront of industry standards and capabilities.

Requirements

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with a track record of designing and delivering complex distributed systems at scale.
• 3+ years of experience with payments or the FinTech space.
• Strong experience across multiple technology stacks (e.g., Java, Python, Go) and proficiency in designing scalable APIs, microservices, and cloud-native applications.
• Demonstrated ability to drive architectural decisions that balance short-term trade-offs with long-term goals.
• Proven leadership in complex initiatives spanning infrastructure, product development, and platform evolution.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience shaping technical strategy and mentoring senior staff and principal engineers across multiple domains and teams.
• Adept at solving ambiguous problems, balancing innovation with execution, and leading teams through change and complexity.
• A passion for system reliability, observability, and building secure, maintainable systems.
• Strong understanding of regulatory and security requirements in the financial domain is a plus.

Nice to Haves

• Hands-on experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and other modern cloud platforms.
• Experience with Terraform and infrastructure as code.

About Marqeta

Learn more about our Product and Engineering team.