Description
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.
The Data Governance team makes sure Plaid handles consumer and customer data responsibly , and can prove it. Our mission is to enforce Plaid's privacy commitments and regulatory obligations in the systems themselves rather than in policy documents: we build the platform and controls that govern how data flows through Plaid , where it lives, who can use it, for what purpose, and for how long.
As a Staff Software Engineer on Data Governance, you will set the technical direction for how Plaid enforces data governance at scale. You'll lead the design of distributed backend systems that reliably delete, restrict, and track data across dozens of services, making architectural decisions whose blast radius spans the whole company.
Responsibilities
- Own the technical architecture for Plaid's data-governance platform
- Lead the design and delivery of multi-quarter, cross-team initiatives
- Drive design reviews and set engineering standards for reliability, correctness, and auditability across the team's systems
- Partner with Legal, Privacy, Security, and product-engineering teams to shape requirements and unblock adoption of governance controls company-wide
- Mentor engineers and level up the team's technical judgment; act as a technical point of contact for governance concerns raised by other teams
Qualifications Must-haves:
- Extensive experience (typically 8+ years) building and operating backend distributed systems at scale, in a language like Go, Java, or similar
- A track record of leading the design of complex systems and driving cross-team technical initiatives to completion
- Strong fundamentals in data stores, consistency, and reliability, with the judgment to reason about correctness and failure modes
- Demonstrated ability to turn ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and align multiple stakeholders behind them
- Excellent written and verbal communication, including working effectively with non-engineering partners (legal, privacy, compliance)
Nice-to-have:
- Prior experience with data privacy, governance, or compliance systems (e.g., GDPR/CCPA deletion, data-use/consent enforcement, cataloging/classification, or auditing)
Plaid provides a comprehensive benefit plan, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k). The compensation range for this position is $207.6K - $273.6K.