Engineering Manager

Manager · Full Time

New York City OfficeUSD 216k – 292k6d ago
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Role

What you'll do.

Lead a high-performing team of 7 engineers at Plaid, combining technical expertise with product thinking to build financial data products that power the next generation of personal finance applications. This Engineering Manager role requires 8+ years of software engineering experience including Staff-level expertise, with responsibility for shaping product roadmaps, driving technical decisions, and building reliable systems at scale across Transactions, Investments, and Liabilities products serving millions of users.

Responsibilities

  • Team Leadership and Development: Lead and mentor a team of 7 engineers with varying career levels, from early-career to senior engineers. Establish clear performance expectations, provide regular coaching and feedback, identify development opportunities, and create growth paths that align individual aspirations with team needs. Foster psychological safety and psychological ownership to build a collaborative team culture.
  • Technical Strategy and Architecture: Own the technical roadmap for Plaid's Transactions, Investments, and Liabilities product suite. Collaborate with Product Leadership to balance new feature development with foundational investments in reliability, data quality, and system scalability. Conduct code and design reviews, ensure architectural decisions align with company standards, and maintain deep technical involvement in complex system design.
  • Product-Engineering Collaboration: Partner directly with Product Management to shape the product roadmap and feature prioritization. Translate ambiguous customer problems into well-defined technical requirements. Participate in customer discovery sessions, articulate technical tradeoffs and feasibility considerations, and set realistic delivery commitments that balance ambition with engineering capacity.
  • End-to-End Project Execution: Drive projects from conception through launch, adoption, and optimization. Take ownership of project outcomes including customer satisfaction metrics and system health. Lead technical design workshops, coordinate cross-team dependencies, and ensure projects maintain quality standards while meeting delivery timelines.
  • Customer and Stakeholder Engagement: Build strong relationships with major customers, go-to-market partners, and internal stakeholders. Serve as the technical voice in conversations about product capabilities, limitations, and implementation strategies. Communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences and collaboratively work through solution requirements.
  • Team Reliability and Operational Excellence: Establish and maintain high standards for system reliability, observability, and operational excellence. Implement incident response processes, conduct postmortem reviews, and drive systemic improvements. Ensure the team takes ownership of customer outcomes and maintains alertness regarding system health metrics and SLA performance.
  • Hiring and Team Growth: Build a diverse, high-performing team through targeted recruiting, effective screening, and strong onboarding. Define role requirements, conduct technical interviews, evaluate cultural fit, and create a structured onboarding program that helps new team members become productive quickly while maintaining team dynamics.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Backend Systems Design at Scale

    Deep expertise designing and operating reliable backend systems and APIs that handle significant scale. Experience with microservices architectures, API gateway patterns, distributed systems, and managing multiple critical services in production environments supporting millions of daily transactions.

  • Data Systems and Pipeline Expertise

    Strong background working with large-scale data pipelines, event streaming systems, and data quality infrastructure. Experience ensuring data consistency, correctness, and reliability in financial systems or similar domain where data integrity is mission-critical.

  • Production Operations and Reliability

    Demonstrated experience managing production systems with high availability requirements. Knowledge of observability practices, monitoring, alerting systems, and incident response processes. Proven ability to balance rapid feature development with system stability.

  • Financial Systems Knowledge

    Understanding of financial data concepts including transaction processing, account reconciliation, investment tracking, and liability management. Knowledge of regulatory requirements, data compliance, and security considerations in financial technology environments.

  • Performance Optimization

    Expertise in identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks in complex systems. Experience optimizing database queries, API latency, and system throughput to meet demanding SLA requirements for customer-facing financial applications.

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field

    Formal education in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or a closely related technical discipline. Alternatively, equivalent practical software engineering experience and demonstrated mastery of computer science fundamentals.

  • Continuous Learning and Technical Currency

    Commitment to staying current with evolving technologies, architectural patterns, and best practices in software engineering and systems design. Demonstrated through technical contributions, side projects, or continued participation in engineering communities.

Experience

  • Senior Staff Engineering Experience

    Minimum 8+ years of software engineering experience with at least 2-3 years at the Staff or Principal level. This background should demonstrate substantial technical depth, architectural thinking, and the ability to influence engineering decisions across multiple teams and systems.

  • Engineering Management Experience

    Minimum 1+ years of direct engineering management experience. Should demonstrate ability to hire, develop, and lead engineers at various career stages. Evidence of managing team dynamics, performance conversations, and creating a culture of excellence and accountability.

  • High-Performance Team Building

    Proven track record of recruiting, onboarding, and scaling engineering teams. Experience growing junior engineers to mid-level and senior roles. Demonstrated ability to establish team processes, code review cultures, and knowledge-sharing practices that accelerate team maturity.

  • Complex Project Delivery

    Experience leading complex, cross-functional projects through conception to production. Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity, manage dependencies, balance competing priorities, and deliver results within realistic timelines without sacrificing quality or team sustainability.

Skills

Required

  • Backend Development

    Proficiency in building, designing, and maintaining production-quality backend systems. Strong understanding of API design, database optimization, concurrency handling, and system reliability patterns.

  • Architectural Thinking

    Ability to think at the system level, design for scalability and reliability, and make sound tradeoff decisions between performance, maintainability, and development velocity.

  • People Leadership

    Demonstrated ability to inspire, develop, and lead engineering teams. Skills in coaching, mentoring, conflict resolution, and creating high-performance team cultures. Comfort with difficult conversations and performance management.

  • Product Judgment

    Strong sense for product strategy, customer needs, and business impact. Ability to evaluate feature requests against technical priorities and communicate the value of foundational investments to stakeholders.

  • Cross-functional Collaboration

    Excellent communication skills and ability to work effectively with Product, Design, Go-to-Market, and Customer Success teams. Strong ability to translate between technical and business perspectives.

  • Technical Communication

    Ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to both engineering and non-technical audiences. Strong written and verbal communication for documentation, design reviews, and customer interactions.

Preferred

  • Fintech or Financial Services Experience

    Nice to have

    Background working in fintech, banking, or financial services technology. Understanding of financial data models, compliance requirements, and the unique challenges of building trust-critical systems in financial technology.

  • Open Banking and API Integration

    Nice to have

    Experience building or operating systems that integrate with third-party financial institutions. Familiarity with open banking standards, bank API connectivity, and the challenges of aggregating financial data at scale.

  • Data Pipeline and ETL Systems

    Nice to have

    Experience designing and maintaining large-scale data pipelines, ETL processes, or event streaming systems. Understanding of data quality frameworks, schema evolution, and handling disparate data formats.

  • Machine Learning Systems

    Nice to have

    Familiarity with machine learning infrastructure and AI-powered product features. Understanding of how ML models are trained, deployed, monitored, and integrated into production systems serving millions of users.

  • Infrastructure and DevOps

    Nice to have

    Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization, Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code. Understanding of deployment pipelines, monitoring solutions, and operational best practices.

  • Fraud Detection and Security

    Nice to have

    Background in building fraud detection systems, security frameworks, or compliance-focused infrastructure. Understanding of security best practices in financial technology environments.

  • International Expansion

    Nice to have

    Experience operating systems across multiple geographic regions and regulatory jurisdictions. Understanding of how international requirements impact system design, data management, and product strategy.

Tech stack

Languages

JavaPythonGoSQL

Frameworks

Spring BootApache KafkagRPCPostgreSQL

Databases

PostgreSQLElasticsearchRedisDynamoDB

Tools

AWSKubernetesDockerGitHubDatadogJenkinsTerraformJIRA

Other

REST APIsMicroservices ArchitectureSystem Design at ScaleFinancial Data IntegrationOpen Banking StandardsData Governance and QualityObservability and Monitoring

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 216,000 – 291,600

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage

    Comprehensive health insurance plans covering medical, dental, and vision care. Details regarding specific plan options, deductibles, and coverage percentages vary based on employee category and location.

  • 401(k) Retirement Plan

    Qualified retirement savings plan with employer matching contributions. Opportunity to build long-term wealth through tax-advantaged retirement savings consistent with federal regulations.

  • Equity Compensation

    Stock options or restricted stock units (RSUs) as part of the total compensation package, allowing employees to participate in Plaid's long-term success and value creation as a high-growth fintech company.

  • Flexible Work Arrangements

    Flexible work location and schedule options reflecting Plaid's commitment to employee autonomy and work-life balance. Specific arrangements vary by team and location.

  • Professional Development

    Support for continuous learning, conference attendance, and professional certifications. Access to training resources, internal knowledge-sharing sessions, and opportunities for cross-functional skill development.

  • Inclusive Workplace Culture

    Commitment to building a diverse and inclusive organization that values different perspectives, lived experiences, and backgrounds. Active employee resource groups and inclusive hiring practices.

  • Accommodation for Disabilities

    Plaid is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates and employees with disabilities throughout the recruiting and employment process. Specific accommodations available upon request at [email protected].

Full posting

Original listing.

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, Seattle, Washington D.C., Raleigh, London, and Amsterdam.

Role Overview

You’ll lead the team building the financial data products behind the next generation of personal finance applications. Our work spans Plaid’s Transactions, Investments, and Liabilities products from strengthening their foundations to building new ways for people to understand their spending, recurring expenses, and net worth. You’ll partner closely with Product and customers to shape the roadmap, combining deep technical judgment with product thinking to turn Plaid’s network into useful capabilities for AI-powered financial experiences.

Responsibilities

  • Lead a team of 7 engineers, ranging from early-career to senior, supporting their growth through clear expectations, coaching, and feedback.

  • Define the team’s long-term direction with Product, balancing new capabilities with investments in reliability, data quality, and scale.

  • Dive into technical design and execution, helping the team make sound decisions across the product suite.

  • Drive projects from ambiguous customer problems through launch, adoption, and ongoing improvement.

  • Work directly with customers and go-to-market partners to shape solutions, explain tradeoffs, and set realistic commitments.

  • Build a team that delivers consistently and takes ownership of both customer outcomes and the health of its systems.

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of software engineering experience, including time as a Staff-level engineer before transitioning into management.

  • 1+ years of engineering management.

  • Deep experience designing and operating reliable backend systems and APIs at scale.

  • Track record of building and growing high-performing engineering teams, either as an engineer or a manager.

  • Strong product judgment, including shaping roadmaps and balancing new features with foundational investments.

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.

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.

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