Principal Software Engineer - Credit Card

Location: Brazil, Sao Paulo; USA, Durham; USA, Miami; USA, Palo Alto; USA, Washington DC

Department: Engineer

Opportunity

We are hiring a Principal Engineer to drive architectural consistency and technical excellence for Nubank’s Global Credit Card division—our largest business unit. You will operate across core platforms and product areas to ensure we are building globally optimal solutions. This is a high-influence leadership role where you will align technical strategy with business General Managers to maximize the impact of our platform investments.

2026's Vision (and how this role contributes)

In 2026, the Credit Card division will focus on maturing our core platform to support massive scale while maintaining rapid product innovation. This role is the "downward force" that identifies efficient architectural patterns and pushes them across the organization. By sitting across multiple business areas, you will prevent technical silos and ensure that every engineering investment reinforces a unified, scalable global architecture.

Mission

Design and operationalize a horizontal technical strategy for the Credit Card division so that:

• Architectural Fragmentation is Minimized: Global patterns are identified and disseminated, preventing teams from solving the same problems in isolation.
• Platform Investments are Maximized: High-leverage solutions are pushed "down the stack" to provide efficiency for all product consumers.
• Business & Tech are Seamlessly Aligned: You act as a direct partner to General Managers, translating complex technical trade-offs into business-centric outcomes.

Core Responsibilities

• Drive Cross-Platform Impact: Identify opportunities for globally optimal outcomes across the division’s core platforms and consumer products.
• Architectural Pattern Leadership: Monitor diverse projects to find commonalities; build and disseminate architectural patterns that elevate the entire organization.
• Strategic Mission Strategizing: Maintain the flexibility to jump into urgent, high-stakes technical investigations or strategic missions as needed.
• Business Stakeholder Partnership: Work independently with General Managers to align technical roadmaps with commercial goals.
• Technical Mentorship & Culture: Act as a peer to engineering leadership, raising the bar and mentoring staff engineers on cross-functional thinking.
• Horizontal Execution: Unlike a "narrow and deep" expert, you will maintain a wide orientation to ensure end-to-end technical health across the division.

Key Business & Engineering Metrics You Will Influence

• Global Efficiency: Reduction in redundant work across sub-divisions.
• Platform Adoption: Speed and depth of downward-pushed architectural solutions across product teams.
• Engineering Stability: Reduction in incidents caused by fragmented or inconsistent architectural patterns.
• Business Alignment: Successful delivery of strategic projects and high-stakes technical investigations.

Challenges and Opportunities (What You’ll Own)

• Bridging the Gap: You will solve the problem of siloed excellence by ensuring that the best solutions from one team become the standard for all.
• Influential Agency: You will have the mandate to push for global efficiency.

What You’ll Find in the Team

• High‑calibre engineers, including staff engineers and experienced engineering managers.
• Complex, high‑impact problems at scale: large merchant integrations, real‑time decisioning, strict SLOs and multi‑partner dependencies.
• Unprecedented Scope: The ability to influence the technical direction of Nubank’s most critical and high-volume division.

What You’ll Navigate

• Complexity of Scale: Balancing the immediate needs of specific product areas with the long-term goal of global platform efficiency.
• Communication Switching: Moving between deep technical RFCs with engineers and high-level strategy sessions with General Managers.
• Geographic Flexibility: Working across teams in the US and Brazil, requiring strong remote collaboration and cultural adaptability.