Senior Software Engineer - AI Applications

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.

AI and intelligent systems are driving the fifth paradigm shift, following previous technological revolutions like mainframes, personal computers, the internet, and mobile devices.

We believe, in the foreseeable future, AI will revolutionize the FinTech industry - from how consumers understand and manage their finances, to how developers build applications and how all companies operate. The fintech industry landscape will undergo a fundamental reshape.

Plaid in the FinTech AI Ecosystem

Plaid is uniquely positioned to become the financial data and insights backbone for AI applications and platforms in this evolving ecosystem.

We believe consumers should be able to understand and manage their financial life through conversational AI interfaces using natural language. We believe consumers should have peace of mind with a trustworthy consent and authorization manager when agents shop for them. We believe identity verification and financial fraud prevention in AI-powered products should feel seamless and embedded for the end users. The list goes on.

The most important AI companies, major fintechs, and customer agent platforms are actively trying to integrate Plaid into AI-powered products and solutions they build.

Plaid’s AI-powered Experiences for Customers

The explosive growth in model intelligence and increasing relevance for enterprise tasks offer a unique opportunity for Plaid to rethink from the ground up how we operate and interact with our customers for the most optimal experience.

Our early experiments in building AI agents for customer experience are paying off with huge business value. For example, our homegrown AI-powered customer support agents resolve a significant proportion of customer questions and issues within seconds, which would otherwise have required humans hours to work on.

This is just the beginning and there is so much more we could do.

The AI Applications Team

You will have the opportunity to join as one of the founding members of this newly formed team that is dedicated to consolidating and rapidly scaling our successful bets so far, and grow with the team in our quest to accelerate Plaid’s transformation into an AI-first company.

Responsibilities

• Work with other AI engineers, software engineers and machine learning engineers to architect, design and implement GenAI-powered products and features
• Collaborate across functions to understand user needs, propose and implement AI-powered solutions where they’re expected to have the highest impact
• Design and execute rapid experiments to push the boundaries on potential business impact from emerging AI capabilities, with a focus on minimal viable testing approaches
• Balance creative exploration of possibilities with rigorous evaluation of technical feasibility, product potential and business impact

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design and API development
• Hands-on experience building and shipping LLM-powered products, iterating with real user feedback
• Practical experience with prompt engineering, fine-tuning, RAG, semantic search (vector databases and embeddings), agent orchestration frameworks, and evaluation/monitoring of open-ended tasks
• Experience building GenAI-powered product experiences, including streaming/SSE and common UX patterns
• Strong debugging and production monitoring experience
• Ability to deeply understand customer needs through user research and rapid experimentation; comfortable operating as a technical PM when needed
• Ability to balance divergent exploration with pragmatic execution, especially in 0 to 1 environments
• Deep curiosity and passion for building GenAI applications

Nice to Have

• Experience training and deploying ML models in production, including fine-tuning LLMs for domain-specific use cases
• Comfortable operating in privacy- and PII-sensitive environments, with experience applying appropriate compliance and data protection controls

$180,000 - $270,000 a year

The target base salary for this position ranges from $180,000/year to $270,000/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

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.

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.