Key skills
Backend system designDistributed systemsProgramming in Go/PythonData platforms experienceData modelingCommunication skillsCollaboration skillsMentoring experienceTechnical direction leadershipPythonGoMachine LearningMLAnalyticsRedshiftKafkaAirflowdbtMentoringCommunicationCollaboration
About this role
Plaid is a company focused on powering user recognition and financial data insights for major companies like Google and Meta. The Staff Software Engineer will design and build backend data systems to enhance user financial data querying, lead impactful projects, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to support feature development and analytics.
Responsibilities:
- Design and build backend data systems that make it possible to query a user’s complete financial life (Plaid users, accounts, and transactions, identity) at scale. You will develop and maintain graph-based infrastructure for identity resolution and entity mapping
- Lead high-impact projects from design through execution: your work will touch tens of millions of end-users, the best applications in fintech, and major financial institutions. You will deliver APs and datasets that power fraud detection, credit decisioning, and personal finance insights
- Work on both the 0 to 1 stage and the 1 to n stage of problems
- Collaborate with data science, machine learning, legal and product teams to support feature development and analytics
- Establish best practices for data quality, performance, reliability and explainability
- Contribute to the team’s technical roadmap and strategy, mentor engineers, and help grow a culture of excellence
Requirements:
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including backend system design and data infrastructure
- Proven experience designing and maintaining distributed systems at scale
- Strong programming skills in Go, Python, or similar backend languages
- Experience working with data platforms (e.g., Redshift, Kafka, Airflow, DBT, or equivalent)
- Familiarity with data modeling and lifecycle challenges
- Strong communication and collaboration skills with cross-functional partners
- Experience with graph databases or graph-based data modeling
- Exposure to ML infrastructure or support systems (e.g., feature stores, batch/stream data)
- Understanding of data privacy, data access restrictions, or legal compliance in data systems
- Prior experience mentoring or leading technical direction for other engineers
- Experience defining the roadmap of an ambiguous technical area