Staff Software Engineer - Instant Access

Responsibilities

• Define the technical direction and architecture for autonomous AI systems that create, repair, and improve financial institution integrations.
• Create novel observability, monitoring, and debugging platforms to provide engineers with deep visibility into the behavior, decisions, and performance of AI-powered systems.
• Build LLM-powered code generation pipelines that write, validate, and ship production code end-to-end with minimal human intervention.
• Design evaluation frameworks that measure correctness, reliability, and safety for non-deterministic systems operating at scale.
• Architect self-healing infrastructure that detects, diagnoses, and repairs itself in under 24 hours.
• Develop multi-layer safety architectures to ensure AI systems take the correct actions in production and degrade safely when uncertainty exists.
• Partner closely with engineering and product leaders to identify high-leverage automation opportunities and turn them into production systems.
• Raise the technical bar across the organization through mentorship, design reviews, and hands-on leadership.

Qualifications

Must Haves

• 8+ years of strong software engineering experience with a deep focus on backend and/or platform systems
• Ability to balance divergent thinking (exploring possibilities) with convergent thinking (evaluating feasibility)
• Must be comfortable working hands-on directly in the codebase. This is a builder archetype position. You will spend considerable time designing and then building the actual systems you own.
• Must be comfortable moving fast, which means making trade-offs between technical excellence and the rapid deployment of working systems to validate whether approaches are fruitful.

Nice to Haves

• Previous experience building production generative AI systems that customers interact with
• Experience with browser automation, web automation, scraping, extraction systems, or tools such as Playwright, Stagehand, or similar frameworks

Our mission at Plaid is to unlock financial freedom for everyone. To support that mission, we seek to build a diverse team of driven individuals who care deeply about making the financial ecosystem more equitable. We recognize that strong qualifications can come from both prior work experiences and lived experiences. We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn't fully match the job description. We are always looking for team members that will bring something unique to Plaid!

Plaid is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion or religious belief, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, military or veteran status, disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Plaid is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance with your application or interviews due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations@plaid.com.

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Additional compensation in the form(s) of equity and/or commission are dependent on the position offered. Plaid provides a comprehensive benefit plan, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k). Pay is based on factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's work experience and skillset, and location. Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefit plans.