Senior Staff / Principal Engineer - Digital Ecosystem

Opportunity

We are hiring a Senior Staff or Principal Engineer to support driving the technical vision and execution for Nubank’s Digital Ecosystem division, with initial focus on NuPay, Ads & Rewards and Insurance. This is a division‑level leadership role: you will work with exceptional engineers (including staff engineers), lead cross‑org architectural decisions, negotiate trade‑offs with product/finance/legal, and enable scalable delivery of high‑impact products (checkout & wallet, advertiser platform and benefits hub, and 1‑click insurance products).

2026's vision and (how this role contributes) 

In 2026 we will transform the Digital Ecosystem into a place where customers discover advantages, pay effortlessly and feel protected, and where merchants grow through data‑driven integrated partnerships. Our priorities are: (1) elevating app quality, (2) deepening customer engagement with contextual and personalized experiences , (3) making Nubank the preferred payments partner and growth engine for merchants , and (4) ensuring scalable, compliant, and financially healthy foundations . This role will own the technical plan to deliver that vision across NuPay, Ads & Rewards and Insurance .

Mission design and operationalize the 2–3 year technical end‑state for the Digital Ecosystem so that:

• NuPay scales to become the de facto checkout and wallet for Nubank customers (TPV ×2 by Dec/26; wallet >3M MAU),
• Ads & Rewards delivers the Advantages Tab, a performant advertiser platform and Ads POC with merchants, and drives material ecosystem revenue,
• Insurance launches and scales high‑quality one‑click complements (Mobile Insurance Relaunch, Pix Protegido evolution), while maintaining aggressive SLOs, strong observability, controlled TCO and an elevated engineering culture.

Core responsibilities

• Support defining the division’s technical end‑state (2–3 years): architecture, shard/partition strategy, migration path (one‑stack) and explicit trade‑offs (cost × latency × availability).
• Co-own availability and performance: set SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, runbooks, incident playbooks and an observability strategy that supports merchants with strict SLAs.
• Support Ads & Rewards platform design: advertiser platform (audience & campaign management), decision/bidding service, real‑time vs batch decisioning, measurement & attribution (ROAS/incrementality), and minimise impact on app UX.
• Drive NuPay ↔ Ads integration for aspirational purchases: real‑time underwriting, multi‑source funding, take‑rate modelling, card‑on‑file / wallet flows and onboarding for flagship merchants.
• Enable Insurance delivery: technical enablement for one‑click products, partner integration and governance (e.g., Chubb), migration to subscription/billing platform where applicable, and app quality improvements (TTFD, dashboards, NPS).
• Support one‑stack discovery and phased migration: balance platformization with pragmatic delivery and tech‑debt management to avoid blocking growth.
• Catalyse product quality culture: introduce and operationalize Product Quality Reviews, drive app excellence rituals, and ensure UX/technical quality are considered across the product lifecycle.
• Mentor and grow engineering leaders and staff engineers; run RFCs, tech talks and post‑mortems; design career paths and enable managers to deliver cross‑BU initiatives.
• Represent the division in cross‑org negotiations and external partner discussions (merchants, partners, regulators), aligning stakeholders and escalating risks proactively.
• Track and report technical impact against business metrics and engineering health indicators.

Key business & engineering metrics you will influence

• NuPay: TPV growth (2× by Dec/26), wallet MAU (>3M), share‑of‑checkout (SoC), p99 latency and availability for merchant traffic.
• Ads & Rewards: ad revenue targets (material ecosystem revenue), ROAS / iROAS / incrementality, CTR, Ads POC results (≥2 merchants), Advantages Tab / Shelves Platform launch.
• Insurance: one‑click complements GWP target (R$493M EOY), product NPS (>60 targets), churn reduction via billing/tolerance changes.
• Engineering health: Engineering Stability Index (ESI), App Quality Score, incident frequency/severity, time to integrate new partners.

Challenges and opportunities (what you’ll own)

• World‑class app quality & Magic App MVP: raise engineering and product expectations, and deliver first‑layer Magic App experiences (Advantages Tab, widgets, contextual flows such as AIPB).
• Real‑time decisioning and aspirational financing: enable low‑latency ads decisioning and NuPay real‑time underwriting for extended financing while preserving app performance.
• One‑click Insurance at scale: deliver MIR (no IMEI) and Pix Protegido evolution, dedicating energy to one‑click complements and partnering with Chubb while retaining monitoring/control.
• Capture offline transactions: accelerate NuPay NFC wallet adoption as an offensive play to reach ~3M MAU and increase offline SoC.
• Platform & compliance foundations: complete SPB integration, advance One‑Stack Project, meet Magic App and regulatory mandates, and ensure resilient, cost‑effective infra.

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.
• Autonomy to shape architecture, product quality rituals and the division roadmap, plus the responsibility to align delivery across product, infra, legal and commercial stakeholders.

What you’ll navigate

• Heavy cross‑BU dependencies (Global Platforms, Nubank+, UV, Marketing) requiring strong stakeholder orchestration.
• Regulatory changes (SPB/BCB) that may force re‑architecture or open‑scheme decisions.
• Dependence on third‑party vendors (wallet SDKs, insurance partners) and partner infra limitations.
• Balancing rapid commercialization and monetization with fraud/credit loss control and sustainable unit economics.
• Trade‑offs between accelerating one‑stack migration and accepting short‑term technical debt to preserve delivery velocity.