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PlaidPL

Staff Software Engineer - Security Infrastructure

Plaid is used by thousands of digital financial apps and services like Betterment, Expensify, Microsoft and Venmo, and by many of the largest banks to make it easy for consumers to connect their financial accounts with the apps and services they want to use.

Plaid

Employee count: 201-500

Salary: 172k-371k USD

United States only

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We believe that the way people interact with their finances will drastically improve in the next few years. We’re dedicated to empowering this transformation by building the tools and experiences that thousands of developers use to create their own products. Plaid powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. We work with thousands of companies like Venmo, SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use. Plaid’s network covers 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Washington D.C., London and Amsterdam.
At Plaid, security isn't a cost center or a compliance checklist—it is our product. We sit at the intersection of thousands of applications, thousands of financial institutions, and hundreds of millions of consumers. We are the trust layer for the fintech ecosystem. If we don't build secure systems, the ecosystem doesn't function.
You will join a team responsible for the secure backbone of Plaid. As we look toward 2026, you will have the opportunity to define industry standards in areas like:
Next-Generation Authorization: We are moving beyond simple RBAC. You will help build a unified, centralized Authorization Platform that enforces fine-grained permissions across all human and non-human identities.
Agentic Security Capabilities: Build AI agents and tooling to automate functions like vulnerability patching, secure code reviews, and anomaly detection.
Zero Trust Architecture: You will evolve our internal token services and identity gateways to enforce rigorous Zero Trust controls for every service, device, and user in our fleet.
AI Guardrails: As Plaid adopts GenAI, you will build the "guardrails" and paved roads that allow our engineers to use LLMs securely, preventing data leakage and model abuse before they happen.
Cryptographic Services: You will own and scale our internal Key Management Systems, the central services for encryption, signing, and key rotation that protect our most sensitive data.
Network Security: You will help us sandbox our sensitive workloads from the internet, preventing command-and-control and data exfiltration.

Responsibilities

  • Design & Code: Write high-quality, scalable code to enhance product security or support security functions.
  • Architect: Lead the technical design of complex, cross-functional security systems. You will determine how we solve problems like "universal service-to-service authentication" or "global data encryption" at scale.
  • Consult & Embed: Act as a security subject matter expert for other engineering teams. We embed within engineering teams to build and accelerate security features within our products and frameworks.
  • Operate: Own your systems in production. We run an on-call rotation for the services we build, ensuring they meet the same high availability standards as our core products.
  • Innovate: Contribute to the broader security industry. Whether it's open-sourcing our internal tools or contributing to major open-source security projects, we want you to help move the industry forward.

Qualifications

  • Strong Software Engineering skills: You have 8+ years of experience building distributed systems, backend services, or infrastructure. You care about code quality, testing, and reliability.
  • You are "security-curious": You understand the fundamentals of security (encryption, auth protocols like OIDC/OAuth, network security) and want to dive deeper. You ask "how can we design this so it can't be misused?" rather than just "is this bug fixed?"
  • You think at a system-level: You can visualize complex dependencies and design solutions that work across dozens of microservices.
  • You are a Partner: You can communicate complex security requirements to product managers and engineers with empathy and clarity.
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.
Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here.

About the job

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Posted on

Job type

Full Time

Experience level

Senior

Salary

Salary: 172k-371k USD

Location requirements

Hiring timezones

United States +/- 0 hours

About Plaid

Learn more about Plaid and their company culture.

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Plaid is used by thousands of digital financial apps and services like Betterment, Expensify, Microsoft and Venmo, and by many of the largest banks to make it easy for consumers to connect their financial accounts with the apps and services they want to use. Plaid connects with over 11,000 financial institutions across the U.S, Canada and Europe. The company was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.

At Plaid, we have diverse backgrounds and skills, but we're all passionate about building a more efficient and inclusive financial infrastructure—together.

We unlock financial freedom for everyone

OUR VISION

Plaid is focused on democratizing financial services through technology. We build beautiful consumer experiences, developer-friendly infrastructure, and intelligent tools that give everyone the ability to create amazing products that solve big problems.

OUR BUSINESS

We started out by building the technical infrastructure APIs that connect consumers, traditional financial institutions, and developers. Today, we add key insights to the data access we provide with our suite of analytics products.

OUR CULTURE

We value cross-team collaboration and diversity of thought. There's always an opportunity to learn from each other outside of day-to-day work, whether it's company-wide offsites, internal hackathons, or co-worker meetups.

OUR PEOPLE

We have diverse backgrounds and skills, but we're all passionate about building a more efficient and inclusive financial infrastructure—together.

Employee benefits

Learn about the employee benefits and perks provided at Plaid.

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Employee assistance program (EAP)

24/7 counseling services

Wellness benefits

$100 monthly fitness stipend.

Disability insurance

We'll cover your disability insurance.

We've got you covered

Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

View Plaid's employee benefits
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Plaid

Company size

201-500 employees

Founded in

2013

View company profile

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