Senior Infrastructure Engineer - Network Infrastructure

Infrastructure Engineer · Senior · Full Time

New York City OfficeUSD 191k – 239k1d ago
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Role

What you'll do.

Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Plaid responsible for architecting and operating mission-critical network infrastructure that powers connections across 12,000 financial institutions. This role combines deep systems engineering expertise with leadership responsibilities, requiring hands-on proficiency in Kubernetes networking, cloud infrastructure, and programming, along with proven ability to execute large-scale production changes safely and drive incident response in a high-stakes fintech environment.

Responsibilities

  • Lead Company-Wide Network Transformations: Own and execute large-scale infrastructure initiatives such as service mesh upgrades, gateway migrations, and cloud network modernization. Design and implement staged rollout strategies that ensure zero customer disruption while systematically decommissioning legacy systems. Establish clear success metrics, rollback procedures, and communication protocols for changes impacting thousands of developers and millions of end users.
  • Modernize and Simplify Cloud Network Architecture: Audit existing cloud infrastructure across AWS and other platforms to identify complexity, redundancy, and operational burden. Develop and execute strategic modernization roadmaps that reduce system complexity, improve observability, and decrease operational toil. Focus on reducing Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) and enabling product teams to move faster through infrastructure abstractions.
  • Develop Self-Service Infrastructure Tools: Build developer-friendly internal platforms and tools using Go and Terraform that enable product engineers to independently expose, route, and secure microservices. Design intuitive APIs and configuration patterns that reduce the cognitive load on product teams while maintaining strong security and compliance guarantees. Continuously gather feedback and iterate on tooling based on developer experience metrics.
  • Strengthen Security and Compliance Boundaries: Design and implement network security policies, service-to-service authentication mechanisms, and compliance controls that align with financial industry regulations. Balance security requirements with developer velocity by creating policies that are easy to reason about and enforce automatically. Collaborate with security and compliance teams to ensure network architecture meets regulatory obligations for fintech operations.
  • Debug and Resolve Complex Network Issues: Investigate production incidents involving DNS resolution, TLS negotiation, load balancing failures, or service mesh misconfigurations. Develop deep root cause analyses and translate findings into preventative measures such as improved alerting, enhanced dashboards, and automated guardrails. Maintain comprehensive runbooks and documentation that enable faster incident response across the infrastructure team.
  • Lead On-Call and Incident Response Operations: Participate in on-call rotations with primary responsibility for network incident triage, escalation, and resolution. Lead incident response efforts for critical network events affecting multiple product lines or customer connectivity. Conduct post-incident reviews, document lessons learned, and drive follow-up improvements to prevent recurrence of issues.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Production Infrastructure Operations at Scale

    Demonstrated experience operating and maintaining production infrastructure supporting significant traffic and customer bases, with prior roles in infrastructure engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or network engineering. Must have solid understanding of deployment strategies, capacity planning, and operational excellence principles.

  • Networking Fundamentals Mastery

    Deep proficiency with foundational networking protocols and concepts including TCP/IP, UDP, DNS resolution and troubleshooting, TLS/SSL certificate management, HTTP/HTTPS semantics, and load balancing strategies. Ability to trace network packets, interpret tcpdump output, and diagnose connectivity issues at multiple OSI layers.

  • Kubernetes Networking Expertise

    Hands-on production experience with Kubernetes networking components including Container Network Interfaces (CNI), service mesh implementations, ingress controllers, and network policies. Strong understanding of how traffic flows through Kubernetes clusters and troubleshooting common networking failure modes.

  • Cloud Networking Administration

    Proven experience designing and operating cloud networks on AWS or equivalent cloud platforms. Proficiency with VPCs, subnets, security groups, network ACLs, routing tables, VPN configurations, and CloudFormation or Terraform for infrastructure-as-code. Experience with AWS networking services such as ALB, NLB, VPC endpoints, and NAT gateways.

  • Systems Programming with Go or Python

    Ability to write production-grade code in Go or Python for building infrastructure tools, CLI utilities, and automation scripts. Comfortable with package management, testing frameworks, error handling, and deployment patterns in chosen language. Experience writing concurrent or asynchronous code is beneficial.

  • Safe Production Change Management

    Proven track record of planning and executing large production changes with comprehensive rollback strategies and minimal blast radius. Familiarity with canary deployments, blue-green deployments, feature flags, and staged rollout mechanisms. Ability to communicate risk clearly to stakeholders and establish decision criteria for rollback.

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Related Field

    Preferred educational foundation, though relevant hands-on experience may substitute. Knowledge of networking fundamentals typically acquired through formal networking courses, certifications, or equivalent self-directed learning.

Experience

  • 5+ Years Infrastructure or SRE Experience

    Minimum five years working in infrastructure engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, or network engineering roles, preferably at companies operating at significant scale with millions of requests per second or serving thousands of customers.

  • Large-Scale System Migrations

    Direct experience leading or significantly contributing to major infrastructure migrations, technology upgrades, or architectural refactors in production environments with zero-downtime requirements.

  • Multi-Team Collaboration

    Experience working across multiple product or infrastructure teams, building consensus around technical decisions, and unblocking product teams through infrastructure improvements and tooling.

Skills

Required

  • Kubernetes and Container Orchestration

    Production-grade expertise with Kubernetes cluster administration, networking, troubleshooting, and upgrade procedures. Deep understanding of container runtime behavior and orchestration patterns.

  • Go Programming

    Ability to write production-quality Go applications, command-line tools, and infrastructure automation. Familiarity with Go concurrency patterns, error handling, and standard library networking packages.

  • Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform)

    Proficiency with Terraform for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure across multiple cloud environments. Experience with state management, modules, variables, and collaborative workflows.

  • TCP/IP Networking

    Deep understanding of TCP/IP stack, packet flow, common protocols, and ability to diagnose networking issues using tools like tcpdump, wireshark, netstat, and traceroute.

  • AWS Cloud Platform

    Practical experience designing and operating AWS infrastructure including VPCs, security groups, EC2, ECS, EKS, Route53, ALB/NLB, and CloudFormation. Understanding of AWS networking architecture and best practices.

  • Incident Response and Troubleshooting

    Systematic approach to diagnosing production issues, root cause analysis, decision-making under pressure, and communication during incidents. Comfortable with on-call responsibilities and following runbooks.

Preferred

  • Istio Service Mesh

    Nice to have

    Production experience with Istio configuration, traffic management policies, security policies, observability integration, and troubleshooting common Istio issues.

  • Envoy Proxy

    Nice to have

    Understanding of Envoy architecture, configuration syntax, listeners, routes, clusters, and endpoints. Experience with Envoy in service mesh or standalone proxy deployment scenarios.

  • Cilium CNI

    Nice to have

    Hands-on experience with Cilium as a Container Network Interface, including eBPF-based networking, network policies, and Cilium's advanced observability capabilities.

  • Python

    Nice to have

    Proficiency with Python for scripting, automation, and building infrastructure tools. Familiarity with Python networking libraries and DevOps-focused frameworks.

  • DNS and Load Balancing

    Nice to have

    Deep expertise in DNS architecture, record types, resolution processes, and troubleshooting. Comprehensive understanding of load balancing algorithms, health checks, and multi-region failover patterns.

  • Observability and Monitoring

    Nice to have

    Experience designing and implementing comprehensive monitoring, logging, and tracing systems. Familiarity with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Datadog, or New Relic for infrastructure visibility.

  • FinTech or Financial Infrastructure

    Nice to have

    Prior experience working in fintech companies or financial services technology environments, with understanding of compliance requirements, security-first architecture, and high-availability demands.

Tech stack

Languages

GoPythonBash/Shell

Frameworks

KubernetesIstioEnvoy

Databases

Relational Databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL)

Tools

TerraformAWS (EC2, VPC, ELB, Route53, EKS)DockerGitCI/CD Systems (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI)

Other

DNS and DHCPTLS/SSL and Certificate ManagementLoad BalancingNetwork Security and FirewallsObservability (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog)Incident Management (PagerDuty, Opsgenie)

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 190,800 – 238,800

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Comprehensive Medical Coverage

    Full medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage. Plaid covers a significant portion of premiums for employees and their families, with flexible plan options to accommodate different healthcare needs.

  • 401(k) Retirement Plan

    Employer-sponsored 401(k) retirement plan with company matching contributions. Access to financial planning resources and investment education to support long-term retirement planning.

  • Equity Compensation

    Stock options or restricted stock units (RSUs) as part of the total compensation package. Competitive equity grants that allow employees to participate in Plaid's long-term value creation and align incentives.

  • Professional Development

    Annual learning and development budget for conference attendance, certifications, training courses, and technical skill development. Support for professional growth and staying current with industry best practices.

  • Paid Time Off

    Generous paid vacation policy, sick leave, and company holidays. Flexibility to manage work-life balance during high-intensity infrastructure projects and on-call responsibilities.

  • Flexible Work Arrangement

    Access to Plaid offices in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Washington D.C., Raleigh, London, and Amsterdam with flexibility for remote work arrangements based on role requirements and team preferences.

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.

As an Infrastructure Engineer on Network Infrastructure, you'll own large parts of the network that every Plaid product depends on. You'll plan and lead changes that touch the whole company, like upgrading our service mesh or modernizing older parts of our cloud network, and deliver them safely without disrupting customers. You'll build tools that let product engineers move faster on their own, help strengthen the security and compliance boundaries in our network, and dig into hard problems when something goes wrong. The team is small and new, so you'll have a real voice in its technical direction, with a clear path toward Staff-level scope.

Responsibilities

  • Lead company-wide network changes, such as service mesh upgrades and gateway migrations, using staged rollouts so customers see no disruption.

  • Simplify and modernize our cloud network, reducing risk and making it easier to operate.

  • Build self-serve tools in Go and Terraform that let product engineers expose, route and secure their services independently.

  • Help set stronger security and compliance boundaries in our network without slowing developers down.

  • Debug complex network issues and turn what you learn into better alerts, dashboards and guardrails.

  • Take part in on-call, lead incident response for network issues, and drive the follow-up fixes.

Qualifications

  • Experience running production infrastructure at scale, in infrastructure, SRE or network engineering

  • A solid understanding of networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, HTTP and load balancing

  • Hands-on experience with Kubernetes networking, such as a CNI, a service mesh or ingress

  • Experience with cloud networking, ideally on AWS

  • Ability to write code in Go or Python

  • A track record of making large production changes safely, with a plan for rollback

  • Nice-to-Have:

    • Production experience with Istio, Envoy or Cilium

 
 

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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