Engineering Manager - Dashboard Foundations

Engineering Manager · Manager · Full Time

San Francisco HQUSD 216k – 328k1mo ago
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Role

What you'll do.

Lead a cross-functional engineering team of 8 engineers at Plaid's Dashboard Foundations team, a critical product platform serving internal and external customers building fraud detection, credit scoring, and fintech products. This role requires a technical leader with 8+ years of industry experience including Staff-level engineering background, combined with proven engineering management expertise to drive platform strategy, mentor diverse talent levels, and deliver high-impact outcomes in a fast-paced fintech infrastructure environment.

Responsibilities

  • Team Leadership and Development: Lead a team of 8 engineers spanning Junior to Staff levels, providing clear goal setting, coaching, and feedback to foster professional growth. Develop talent retention strategies, identify high performers for advancement, and create a culture of technical excellence and psychological safety.
  • Strategic Platform Vision and Roadmap: Define and drive long-term strategy for Dashboard Foundations platform in partnership with technical and product leadership across Plaid. Establish north star objectives aligned with company mission to unlock financial freedom, and create a multi-quarter roadmap that balances technical infrastructure improvements with customer-facing product delivery.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product teams building Fraud, Credit, Signal, Account Verification, and Transfer products to identify high-leverage opportunities. Collaborate with stakeholders across engineering, product, and security to shape priorities and ensure the platform meets evolving needs of internal teams and external developers.
  • Technical Quality and Execution Excellence: Establish and uphold high bars for technical quality, security, and delivery velocity. Lead by example through participation in critical technical design decisions, architectural reviews, and performance optimization initiatives. Drive consistency in code quality, testing practices, and operational excellence across the team.
  • Platform Architecture and Scalability: Oversee design and implementation of scalable, reliable architectures supporting millions of users and thousands of financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK, and Europe. Ensure the Dashboard platform maintains high availability, security compliance, and performance under growing demand from diverse product teams.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Full-Stack Development Competency

    Proficiency across frontend and backend technologies. Experience building web platforms, REST/GraphQL APIs, or similar systems serving multiple internal and external customers. Knowledge of modern web frameworks and database systems essential.

  • System Design and Architecture

    Strong capability in designing fault-tolerant, scalable systems. Experience with microservices, distributed systems principles, caching strategies, load balancing, and capacity planning at scale.

  • Financial Services Technology

    Experience with fintech, payments, banking infrastructure, or financial data integration preferred. Understanding of regulatory compliance, data security, and PCI-DSS standards valuable for this role.

Education

  • Computer Science Degree or Equivalent

    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent professional software engineering experience demonstrating mastery of fundamentals.

Experience

  • 8+ Years Industry Experience

    Demonstrated software engineering career with substantial time spent as a Staff-level engineer or equivalent IC track, having tackled complex system design challenges, mentored junior engineers, and driven technical decisions at scale.

  • 1+ Years Engineering Management

    Proven track record in an engineering management role with direct responsibility for team performance, hiring, professional development, and delivery accountability. Experience managing engineers at multiple levels preferred.

  • Scalable Architecture Design

    Deep hands-on experience designing and architecting scalable, reliable systems supporting production environments at scale. Track record with distributed systems, database optimization, API design, or infrastructure platforms.

  • High-Performing Team Building

    Demonstrated ability to build, grow, and lead high-performing engineering teams with focus on diversity, talent development, and retention. Experience as either an individual contributor mentor or engineering manager valued.

Skills

Required

  • Engineering Management

    Proven ability to recruit, hire, develop, and retain engineering talent. Strong communication, feedback delivery, and conflict resolution skills. Experience setting technical vision and aligning teams around shared objectives.

  • System Architecture and Design

    Expert-level capability in designing scalable systems, evaluating architectural tradeoffs, and leading technical design reviews. Ability to balance business requirements with technical constraints.

  • Product Platform Thinking

    Understanding of how platform teams serve multiple internal and external customers. Ability to identify leverage points, prioritize platform infrastructure investments, and measure platform success through adoption and developer satisfaction metrics.

  • Cross-Functional Leadership

    Demonstrated success collaborating with product managers, designers, and other engineering leaders to define strategy and drive outcomes. Comfort working in matrix organizational structures.

  • Code Quality and Best Practices

    Strong commitment to technical excellence, including code review culture, testing rigor, performance optimization, and security best practices. Ability to establish and maintain quality standards across the team.

Preferred

  • Fintech or Payment Systems Experience

    Nice to have

    Background building products or infrastructure in fintech, payments, banking, or financial data platforms. Understanding of regulatory requirements, compliance frameworks, and security considerations in financial services.

  • Open Source and Developer Experience

    Nice to have

    Experience building developer-focused tools, SDKs, or platforms. Familiarity with open source communities and developer relations best practices. Understanding of how to design APIs and documentation that delight engineers.

  • Rapid Growth and Scaling Experience

    Nice to have

    Experience scaling engineering teams and systems during periods of rapid growth. Track record of maintaining quality and velocity while building processes and structures that scale with organizational complexity.

  • Performance and Reliability Engineering

    Nice to have

    Deep experience with observability, monitoring, incident response, and performance optimization. Familiarity with reliability engineering practices, SLA management, and chaos engineering principles.

Tech stack

Languages

JavaScript/TypeScriptPython or GoSQL

Frameworks

React or Modern Frontend FrameworkExpress.js, Flask, or FastAPINode.js or Python Web Stack

Databases

PostgreSQLRedis or Cache Layer TechnologiesData Warehousing or Analytics Databases

Tools

Kubernetes or Container OrchestrationGit and CI/CD PipelinesObservability and Monitoring ToolsAWS or Cloud Infrastructure

Other

Microservices ArchitectureSecurity and CompliancePerformance and Scalability EngineeringAPI Design and Documentation

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 216,000 – 328,200

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage

    Full health insurance coverage including medical, dental, and vision plans with company contributions, supporting employee and family wellness.

  • 401(k) Retirement Plan

    Tax-advantaged retirement savings with company matching contributions, supporting long-term financial planning and wealth building.

  • Equity Compensation

    Stock options or equity grants in Plaid, allowing employees to participate in company value creation and long-term wealth building as the company scales.

  • Collaborative Work Environment

    Offices in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., London, and Amsterdam with hybrid flexibility. Option to work with distributed team members across multiple US locations.

  • Professional Development and Mentorship

    Access to technical learning resources, conference opportunities, and mentorship from experienced engineering leaders at a high-growth fintech company.

  • Impact-Driven Mission

    Work on products powering millions of users at companies like Venmo and SoFi, directly contributing to unlocking financial freedom and improving the financial ecosystem globally.

Process

Interview steps.

  1. 01

    Application and Resume Review

    Initial screening of application materials focusing on relevant engineering leadership experience, technical depth, and platform infrastructure background. Resume highlights should emphasize Staff-level technical contributions and management achievements.

  2. 02

    Recruiter Screening Call

    30-minute conversation with Plaid recruiter to discuss career trajectory, motivation for the role, team leadership philosophy, and alignment with company mission. Questions will focus on previous scaling challenges and team building experience.

  3. 03

    Engineering Leadership Interview

    Deep technical conversation with a senior engineer or engineering director exploring system design expertise, architectural decision-making, and approach to building scalable platforms. Prepare to discuss a complex system you've designed or optimized.

  4. 04

    Product and Strategy Alignment

    Interview with product leader or cross-functional partner to assess ability to collaborate on roadmap prioritization, understand customer needs, and balance platform investment with direct customer value. Discuss approach to identifying high-leverage opportunities.

  5. 05

    Team Leadership and People Management

    Conversation with current or peer engineering manager discussing team building philosophy, feedback and development approaches, handling of challenging dynamics, and strategies for growing Staff-level engineers. Real scenarios will test management thinking.

  6. 06

    Executive Leadership Interview

    Final interview with VP or Director level exploring long-term vision for the role, how you'd structure the team, strategic priorities for the first 90 days, and culture fit with Plaid's mission-driven approach.

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, Washington D.C., London and Amsterdam.

Description of the team

What does the team do? What is the Team’s Mission (use we statements)

  • The Dashboard Foundations team is the product platform team that stewards the Plaid Dashboard (dashboard.plaid.com). As both the portal for applying for production access and also the host for many products, the Dashboard is a critical touchpoint for our customers.

  • Our mission is to build the platform of every product engineer’s dreams, with rich tooling, abstractions, and resources available to support every phase of the software development lifecycle so that developing a high quality, secure product is fast and easy.

  • Our customers are over a dozen teams building in the Dashboard, representing products in areas such as Fraud, Credit, Signal, Account Verification, Transfer products, and more.

  • We are a full stack team made up of former product engineers, drawing upon our experience to set our north star vision. We have in-person members in New York and San Francisco as well as some members distributed in various locations across the United States.

Responsibilities

List Responsibilities and potential impact of the role

  • You will lead a team of 8 engineers, ranging from Junior to Staff, developing them through clear goal setting, coaching, and feedback.

  • You’ll define and drive the long-term strategy for this foundational area, in close partnership with technical and product leaders across Plaid.

  • You’ll collaborate with cross-functional partners to identify high-leverage opportunities, shape the roadmap, and dive deep into technical design and execution details to ensure consistent delivery of high-impact business outcomes.

  • You’ll uphold a high bar for technical quality and delivery velocity, leading by example.

Qualifications

List must-haves and one nice-to-have requirements

  • 8+ years of industry experience, that includes time as a Staff-level engineer before transitioning into management.

  • 1+ years of engineering management experience

  • Deep experience designing scalable, reliable architectures that support real-world products at scale.

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

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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