Hybrid Staff Engineer – Payments Platform

at GEICO

• Job title: Staff Engineer – Payments Platform
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: $115,000 - $230,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Azure, Cassandra, Cloud, Docker, ElasticSearch, Java, Kubernetes, MongoDB, MySQL, NoSQL, Postgres, Python, SQL
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Chevy Chase, United States

About the role

• Staff Engineer leading design and development of next-generation payment platform at GEICO. Collaborating on payment innovation while optimizing transaction flows and fraud detection.

Responsibilities

• Lead Payment Platform Innovation: Architect and build scalable, secure payment systems, integrating real-time fraud detection, tokenization, and batch processing capabilities.
• Harness Data for Impact: Design data pipelines and analytics frameworks to monitor transaction health, detect fraud patterns, and optimize payment performance.
• Drive Strategy: Partner with product managers, data scientists, and engineers to define and execute a technical roadmap for payment modernization and analytics.
• Ensure Reliability: Own the performance, security, and usability of payment platforms, ensuring 99.9% uptime and compliance with industry standards.
• Mentor & Inspire: Coach engineers, share best practices, and influence stakeholders to elevate payment and data engineering expertise.
• Support Operations: Provide on-call support for payment systems, troubleshoot issues, and champion CI/CD and Infrastructure-as-Code practices.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience designing complex systems, data pipelines, and architectures, with expertise in scaling, performance tuning, and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Deep expertise in SQL & open-source databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Cassandra, Elasticsearch, etc.) for transaction and analytics use cases.
• Fluency and Specialization with at least two modern languages such as Java, C++, Python or C# including object-oriented design.
• Fluency in DevOps Concepts, Cloud Architecture, and Azure DevOps Operational Framework.
• 10 + years in software development, platform architecture, or infrastructure management, ideally with payment or fintech systems.
• 4+ years working with open-source frameworks.
• 3+ years in system architecture and design, preferably for payment or data platforms.
• Nice to have: 3+ years working with Azure, AWS, or hybrid data centers.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Total Rewards program that offers personalized coverage tailor-made for you and your family’s overall well-being.
• Financial benefits including market-competitive compensation; a 401K savings plan vested from day one that offers a 6% match; performance and recognition-based incentives; and tuition assistance.
• Access to additional benefits like mental healthcare as well as fertility and adoption assistance.
• Supports flexibility- We provide workplace flexibility as well as our GEICO Flex program, which offers the ability to work from anywhere in the US for up to four weeks per year.