Director Software Engineer Startup Jobs in Austin, TX

About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale - tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters - to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

Overview:
Leads software development teams in delivering secure, scalable, high-quality fintech applications and platforms. Oversees the execution of the full software development lifecycle-from backlog refinement through build, test, deployment, monitoring, and iteration-ensuring delivery meets business priorities, regulatory requirements, and ethical standards. Drives disciplined agile and DevSecOps practices, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and continuous improvement to optimize delivery speed, quality, and resilience.
Ensures development work integrates responsibly with AI/ML capabilities-including Generative AI and Agentic AI coding-and that all outputs adhere to established data governance, model explainability, and financial regulatory compliance standards. Acts as a leader for engineering teams, removing blockers, enabling productivity, and fostering an inclusive, high-performance culture. Coaches and develops engineers to adapt to evolving tools, frameworks, and AI-driven workflows. Partners closely with product managers, QA, risk, compliance, and security functions to deliver safe, transparent, and customer-centric solutions. While primarily a leadership role, may spend up to 50-65% of time in hands-on coding, code reviews, and technical prototyping to guide best practices and maintain technical credibility.
All roles require digital fluency, including the ability to work with emerging technologies such as Generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot) to support everyday work.
Key Responsibilities:

• Monitors throughput across multiple teams to determine capacity and oversees partnerships with stakeholders to define user requirements for complex projects.
• Guides requirements gathering, feedback incorporation, and actionable metrics to assess delivery feasibility and reviews gaps in acceptance criteria.
• Oversees translation of user requirements into system designs, ensuring alignment with business strategy and formalizing best practices.
• Leads system architecture discussions, interprets findings from investigations, and owns design decisions for complex products.
• Oversees project plans, release plans, and estimation processes, addressing escalated issues and removing technical obstacles.
• Develops standards for code quality, security, and maintainability; updates security assessment processes to ensure code is free from threats.
• Shapes best practices for debugging, automation, and code review across multiple products and teams.
• Provides guidance on test planning, prioritizes tests, and ensures expected testing results across product features.
• Leads system monitoring efforts, sets data analysis standards, and aligns project strategy for long-term value.
• Provides technical expertise to resolve major incidents, ensures teams have resources to respond to incidents, and shares learnings to prevent recurrence.
• Manages team decisions around developer tools, oversees selection and enhancement of tools, and shares best practices for complex products.
• Identifies and develops engineering talent, ensures team skills support business goals, and disseminates knowledge to improve product reliability and performance.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• 10+ years of relevant work experience and a Bachelors degree, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in leading software engineering teams in fintech, payments, or banking technologies/software systems.
• Experience in developing and/or implementing web-based or mobile applications.
• Experience in a leadership role with direct reports.
• Experience in requirements gathering, system design, and architecture for complex software solutions.
• Experience in agile delivery management and DevSecOps practices.
• Experience in code development, review, and debugging for enterprise-scale applications.
• Experience in test planning, execution, and automation.
• Experience in incident response and resolution for software engineering teams.
• Experience in talent management, coaching, and engineering development.
• Experience in securities, payments, and banking technologies.
• Experience building and testing enterprise-scale web services.
• Experience in product development and working on internal or client-facing project or technical teams.

Information for US Applicants

For roles located in the US, the estimated salary range for this position is $186,800.00 to $ 299,200.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity.Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.

Work Hours

Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements

This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements

This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.