Principal Software Engineer
Job Summary:
Location: Remote North Calorina, remote Miami, Remote Florida
Division: Ticketmaster, Payments
Line manager: VP Marketplace Engineering
Contract terms: Permanent, full time
THE TEAM
We're seeking an experienced C++ engineer to join our Platform Payments team, working on Ticketmaster's mission-critical payment processing systems. These systems process millions of transactions monthly across multiple payment methods and 20+ gateway providers, powering real-time payments for culture-defining live events at massive global scale.
THE JOB
You'll work across a mature C/C++ codebase spanning three decades — from pre-standard patterns in our core authorization gateway to C++17 in our Bazel monorepo. The immediate work is maintenance and strategic modernization of these systems, but this role is explicitly designed to grow: from legacy renovation into systems design, gRPC service architecture, and new technology adoption including Rust. If you're energized by the challenge of understanding why a system was built the way it was before deciding what it should become, this is the role.
This is not a maintenance job with a maintenance ceiling. You'll work on systems that power how fans pay for live events worldwide — at a scale where a misconfiguration can cause thousands of payment failures during a major onsale. The intellectual challenge is real: strategic modernization of systems spanning three decades of C++, with a clear trajectory into new technology.
There is tremendous green-field work ahead: decomposing legacy IPC into gRPC services, strengthening real-time fraud defenses during peak onsales, optimizing seamless global checkout, integrating new payment methods, and expanding embedded finance that shapes not just ticket purchases but the full in-venue experience. A strong engineer in this role will meaningfully shape the direction of these critical systems.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING
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Maintain and strategically modernize high-throughput payment processing systems handling real financial transactions in real time
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Drive platform migration work, including migrating a core Windows C++ authorization gateway to Linux via Clang and Bazel
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Develop robust payment integrations with third-party gateways (Chase Paymentech, Barclays, HSBC, AMEX, Adyen, Braintree, Klarna, Shift4, and others)
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Decompose legacy IPC frameworks into gRPC services, enabling payment components to be reused across the broader payments ecosystem — this is the bridge from maintenance into systems design
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Implement security-critical features involving encryption, PCI compliance, and sensitive payment data handling
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Optimize performance of transaction processing pipelines where latency directly affects whether a customer completes a purchase
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Incrementally steer legacy codebases toward modern C++ practices (RAII, ownership semantics, safe string handling) without breaking the payment flows that depend on them
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Design and implement comprehensive testing including unit tests, integration tests, and fuzz testing for security-critical components
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Debug and resolve production issues in systems with complex interdependencies and real operational takes
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Collaborate with payment operations teams to onboard new payment methods and gateway providers
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Ensure compliance with PCI-DSS and other financial industry standards
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Participate in on-call rotation for production payment system support
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (or TECHNICAL SKILLS)
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7+ years of professional C++ development experience in production environments
- Modern C++ fluency
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Strong understanding of systems programming, including memory management, concurrency, and performance optimization
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Ability to reason about undefined behavior, and its practical consequences across platforms
- Systematic debugging methodology
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Toolchain understanding and cross-compilation concerns
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Proficiency with build systems — Bazel experience highly valued;
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Experience w