Software Engineer

Plaid1 weeks ago

Location

New York City Office

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 207,600 – 339,600

Level

Mid

Role

Backend Engineer

Posted

May 8, 2026

Full TimeMid

The role

Summary

Join Plaid's Online Storage team to design, deploy, and scale distributed storage systems that power the Core Data Models used across the company's engineering organization. This role focuses on building reliable, scalable, and efficient storage infrastructure that supports large datasets and high-throughput workloads while optimizing query performance and infrastructure costs. You'll partner with stakeholder teams to evolve Plaid's storage capabilities and create foundational tools that enable product engineers to move faster with confidence.

What you'll do

Build and scale distributed storage systems: Design, develop, and scale systems capable of supporting large datasets and high-throughput workloads with strong performance and reliability guarantees. Focus on architecting solutions that meet stringent service level objectives and handle millions of concurrent operations across Plaid's infrastructure.

Design resilient storage infrastructure: Create and evolve distributed storage systems that operate reliably with minimal downtime. Design fault-tolerance mechanisms, implement data replication strategies, and ensure systems gracefully handle infrastructure failures and network partitions.

Navigate complex technical challenges: Drive clarity through ambiguous storage and infrastructure problems by conducting deep technical investigations, collaborating with cross-functional teams, and synthesizing requirements from multiple stakeholders into coherent system designs.

Diagnose and resolve storage engine issues: Perform deep technical troubleshooting of storage engines including query optimization, analyzing internal behavior, reading and modifying source code when necessary, and implementing fixes that improve system performance and reliability.

Lead reliable system migrations: Plan and execute careful, reliability-focused database and storage migrations that minimize risk, reduce customer impact, and ensure seamless transitions for dependent systems. Develop comprehensive testing and rollback strategies to protect critical infrastructure.

Build developer-focused storage capabilities: Create foundational storage abstractions and tooling that significantly reduce friction for product engineers. Design intuitive APIs and operational experiences that enable teams to leverage storage infrastructure more confidently and efficiently while reducing context-switching overhead.

Optimize infrastructure costs and performance: Analyze query patterns and infrastructure utilization to identify optimization opportunities. Implement cost reduction strategies through efficient resource allocation, capacity planning, and performance tuning without sacrificing reliability or developer experience.

What we look for

Technical

Backend systems and platform engineering expertiseDemonstrated deep experience architecting and building backend services, platform systems, or infrastructure components that serve internal or external customers at scale. Experience designing APIs, orchestrating distributed systems, and operating production infrastructure.

Advanced storage technology expertiseDeep knowledge of modern storage technologies including understanding of consistency models, transaction semantics, indexing strategies, query optimization, and operational characteristics of different storage architectures.

Database deployment and orchestration at scaleHands-on experience deploying, configuring, and orchestrating databases in production environments. Familiarity with operational challenges including backup and recovery, failover mechanisms, data migration, and performance tuning under production constraints.

SQL database optimization and tuningStrong background in performance optimization for SQL-based databases including query analysis, index design, execution plan optimization, connection pooling, and identifying bottlenecks in complex distributed queries.

Storage platform design and evolutionExperience designing storage platform architectures, versioning strategies, and evolution plans. Understanding of how to balance competing requirements for consistency, availability, performance, and operational simplicity.

Cloud infrastructure and infrastructure-as-codePractical experience with cloud platforms, particularly AWS, and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform. Ability to provision, manage, and scale cloud resources confidently while understanding cloud-specific operational patterns and cost implications.

Production database experienceHands-on operational experience with TiDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or similar distributed database systems. Understanding of how to deploy, configure, monitor, and troubleshoot these systems in production environments.

Internal tooling and automation developmentExperience building internal tools, automation frameworks, and operational dashboards that improve reliability, reduce manual toil, and enhance developer efficiency across engineering teams.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related fieldOr equivalent professional software engineering experience demonstrating mastery of computer science fundamentals including distributed systems, database concepts, and software architecture principles.

Experience

5-8 years of software engineering experienceSubstantial professional experience building production software systems with demonstrated expertise in backend, platform, or infrastructure engineering domains.

3+ years in storage or infrastructure engineeringFocused experience working directly with storage systems, databases, or infrastructure platforms in production environments with responsibility for system reliability and performance.

Skills

Required skills

GoProduction experience building and maintaining backend services in Go, including understanding of goroutines, channels, memory management, and Go-specific design patterns.

Distributed systems designAbility to design and implement distributed systems with consideration for consistency, availability, partition tolerance, and failure modes. Understanding of consensus algorithms, replication strategies, and eventual consistency patterns.

Database performance optimizationExpertise in analyzing and optimizing database query performance including profiling tools, execution plan analysis, index design, and identifying performance bottlenecks in complex systems.

Terraform and infrastructure-as-codePractical expertise writing, testing, and maintaining Terraform configurations for AWS infrastructure. Understanding of state management, modules, and infrastructure versioning best practices.

AWS cloud platformDeep familiarity with AWS services including RDS, EC2, ECS/EKS, CloudWatch, and other infrastructure services relevant to database and storage systems.

SQL query languageAdvanced proficiency writing complex SQL queries, understanding query optimization, and designing efficient schemas and indexes for relational databases.

System troubleshooting and debuggingStrong diagnostic skills for investigating complex production issues. Experience using observability tools, log analysis, profiling, and source code inspection to resolve deeply technical problems.

Nice to have

TypeScriptProduction experience with TypeScript for backend services, infrastructure automation, or operational tooling. Familiarity with Node.js runtime and related ecosystem.

MongoDBOperational experience deploying, managing, and optimizing MongoDB clusters. Understanding of document-oriented data models and MongoDB-specific performance characteristics.

TiDB or NewSQL databasesExperience working with modern distributed SQL databases like TiDB that combine SQL compatibility with horizontal scalability and strong consistency.

Storage engine internalsUnderstanding of how storage engines work internally including B-tree and LSM-tree implementations, write amplification, compression, and other low-level optimization techniques.

Kubernetes orchestrationExperience deploying and managing containerized workloads on Kubernetes clusters including StatefulSet design for databases and infrastructure best practices.

Security in storage systemsExperience implementing and maintaining security best practices for storage and infrastructure including encryption at rest and in transit, access control, and audit logging.

Fintech domain knowledgeFamiliarity with financial technology, payment systems, or regulated industries providing context for understanding Plaid's business domain and data sensitivity requirements.

Compensation & benefits

Salary

USD 207,600 – 339,600 (annual)

Stock options

Available

Benefits

Health insurance

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with company-subsidized premiums for employees and dependents.

Retirement planning

401(k) retirement savings plan with employer matching contributions to support long-term financial planning.

Professional development

Learning budgets, conference attendance allowances, and internal knowledge-sharing forums to support continuous skill development in storage systems and infrastructure technologies.

Remote work flexibility

Flexible work arrangements with the ability to work from home or one of Plaid's office locations in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., or London.

Equity compensation

Stock options allowing employees to share in Plaid's success as a post-Series D fintech infrastructure platform.

Unlimited PTO

Flexible paid time off policy encouraging work-life balance and recovery for employees across the organization.

Financial wellness programs

Access to financial planning resources and employer-sponsored financial tools to help employees optimize their personal finances.

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

Active programs supporting diverse hiring, employee resource groups, and inclusive workplace practices across Plaid's global offices.

Interview process

1
Initial screening call — 30-minute conversation with a recruiter to discuss your background, interest in the storage engineering role, and alignment with Plaid's mission. This call confirms basic qualifications and explores your experience with distributed systems and database technologies.
2
Technical phone screen — 60-minute technical discussion with a senior engineer from the storage team. Expect conversation around your hands-on experience with storage systems, database optimization challenges you've solved, and architectural decision-making. May include whiteboarding or code review of past work.
3
Systems design interview — 90-minute deep dive into designing a large-scale storage system. You'll be asked to propose architecture for storing and querying large datasets at scale, discuss trade-offs between consistency and availability, and explain operational considerations for production deployments.
4
Behavioral and domain expertise discussion — 60-minute conversation exploring problem-solving approach, collaboration with cross-functional teams, and leadership in driving technical clarity through ambiguous situations. Discussion of past experiences leading migrations or solving complex storage challenges.
5
Onsite or final round — Half-day visit (or video equivalent) including meetings with the storage team lead, principal engineers, and potential collaborators from other infrastructure teams. Expect technical deep dives, discussion of long-term platform direction, and culture fit assessment with Plaid's engineering values.