Staff Software Engineer - Security Infrastructure

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.

$172,368 - $370,800 a year

The target base salary for this position ranges from $172,368/year to $370,800/year in Zone 1. The target base salary will vary based on the job's location.

Our Geographic Zones Are As Follows:

Zone 1 - New York City and San Francisco Bay Area

Zone 2 - Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington D.C.

Zone 3 - Austin, Boston, Denver, Houston, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego

Zone 4 - Raleigh-Durham and all other US cities

The base salary range listed for this full-time position excludes commission (if applicable), equity and benefits. The pay range shown on each job posting is the minimum and maximum target for new-hire salaries. Actual pay may be higher or lower depending on factors like skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

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 [email protected] .

Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here .