# Staff Software Engineer - AI & Intelligent Tooling
**Company:** [Plaid](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/plaid)
Staff Software Engineer at Plaid, focusing on AI-powered internal tooling and developer productivity platforms. This hands-on role leads the technical direction of Intelligent Tooling systems that embed AI into Plaid's software development lifecycle, requiring 8+ years of experience building developer tools, infrastructure, or internal platforms with exposure to AI systems and agentic workflows.
**Role:** Staff Engineer
**Seniority:** Staff
**Locations:** San Francisco HQ
**Salary:** 207600–306600 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaid/41448609-24d6-44ea-a5ba-c87cf3dc3f0d)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/plaid/staff-software-engineer-ai-intelligent-tooling
---
## Responsibilities

- Design and Build Internal Tools & Services: Architect, develop, and maintain internal tools and services that directly impact engineering productivity across Plaid's organization. This includes designing scalable platforms that integrate seamlessly into core developer workflows while maintaining high reliability and performance standards.
- AI-Powered Workflow Integration: Lead the integration of AI-powered tools and agentic systems into Plaid's software development lifecycle. Design automation workflows that reduce lower-leverage work for engineers, enabling them to focus on higher-impact creative and strategic tasks.
- Platform Reliability & Optimization: Improve the reliability, usability, and performance of existing internal platforms. Implement comprehensive observability, monitoring, and alerting to ensure consistent uptime and rapid incident response across all developer-facing systems.
- End-to-End System Ownership: Own complete systems lifecycle from design through production support, including on-call responsibilities, bug fixes, iterative improvements, and feature enhancements. Take ownership of operational excellence and drive continuous improvement through user feedback and data-driven decisions.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, designers, infrastructure engineers, and other stakeholders to deliver practical, high-leverage solutions. Communicate technical decisions, trade-offs, and roadmap priorities to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Set technical direction and architectural standards for major areas of the Intelligent Tooling platform. Mentor and coach other engineers on the team, conduct technical reviews, and establish best practices that scale across the organization.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Strong educational foundation in computer science, software engineering, mathematics, or equivalent technical discipline. While not strictly required, this provides valuable foundational knowledge in algorithms, systems design, and theoretical computer science."}

### technical

- {"name":"Developer Tooling & Internal Platforms Experience","description":"Proven experience building and shipping developer tools, internal platforms, or infrastructure systems. Deep understanding of developer experience optimization, API design, and how tools impact engineering velocity and productivity."}
- {"name":"AI & Automation Systems Development","description":"Hands-on exposure to developing AI systems, machine learning integrations, or agentic workflows. Practical experience implementing automation that improves developer productivity, reduces manual toil, and enables intelligent decision-making."}
- {"name":"AI-Powered Developer Tools Proficiency","description":"Hands-on experience using modern AI-powered developer tools such as GitHub Copilot, IDE integrations, or similar AI assistants. Understanding of how these tools improve productivity and knowledge of their limitations and best practices."}
- {"name":"Systems Design & Architecture","description":"Strong capability to design scalable, reliable systems from first principles. Experience making architectural trade-offs, designing for fault tolerance, and building systems that grow with user demand."}
- {"name":"Full-Stack Development","description":"Proficiency across multiple layers of the stack, including backend services, APIs, databases, frontend interfaces, and deployment infrastructure. Ability to navigate the entire system to identify bottlenecks and optimize performance."}

### experience

- {"name":"8+ Years Professional Software Engineering Experience","description":"Extensive track record of building production software systems, managing complex technical challenges, and delivering high-impact solutions. This level of experience typically demonstrates deep system design capabilities and understanding of long-term maintainability."}
- {"name":"Developer Tools or Infrastructure Platform Development","description":"Demonstrated experience building developer-facing tools, internal platforms, or infrastructure components. Examples include build systems, CI/CD platforms, monitoring solutions, code quality tools, or developer APIs that directly improve engineering productivity."}
- {"name":"Technical Leadership & Architectural Influence","description":"Proven ability to set technical direction, lead architectural decisions, and influence other engineers through expertise rather than formal authority. Track record of mentoring junior engineers and establishing engineering best practices that scale."}
- {"name":"Production System Ownership","description":"Experience owning systems end-to-end in production environments, including on-call support, incident response, performance optimization, and long-term reliability improvements. Understanding of operational excellence and production readiness."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Systems Design & Architecture","description":"Design distributed systems at scale, consider fault tolerance, scalability, and long-term maintenance. Make informed trade-offs between performance, reliability, and engineering velocity."}
- {"name":"Backend Software Engineering","description":"Develop robust production backend services with strong understanding of API design, database optimization, and deployment considerations. Write maintainable, testable code that scales reliably."}
- {"name":"Problem-Solving & Root Cause Analysis","description":"Decompose complex problems into manageable components, analyze system behavior, and drive to sustainable solutions. Ability to think critically under pressure and handle ambiguous requirements."}
- {"name":"Cross-Functional Collaboration","description":"Work effectively with diverse teams including product managers, designers, infrastructure engineers, and other stakeholders. Communicate technical concepts clearly and build consensus around architectural decisions."}
- {"name":"Technical Leadership & Influence","description":"Lead engineering teams and drive technical decisions through influence, expertise, and clear communication. Ability to mentor others and establish engineering practices that improve team productivity."}
- {"name":"Observability & Monitoring","description":"Implement comprehensive monitoring, logging, and tracing to understand system behavior. Design dashboards and alerts that enable rapid incident detection and resolution."}

### preferred

- {"name":"CI/CD & DevOps Expertise","description":"Strong familiarity with continuous integration and deployment pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, containerization, and modern DevOps practices. Experience optimizing build times and deployment processes."}
- {"name":"Observability & SRE Practices","description":"Deep understanding of observability tooling, distributed tracing, metrics collection, and site reliability engineering principles. Experience implementing robust alerting and incident response processes."}
- {"name":"AI/ML Systems Engineering","description":"Experience building systems that integrate machine learning models into production environments. Understanding of model serving, monitoring model performance, and handling edge cases in AI systems."}
- {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure Knowledge","description":"Practical experience with major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) including container orchestration, serverless architectures, and infrastructure as code. Understanding of cloud cost optimization."}
- {"name":"Financial Technology (Fintech) Domain Experience","description":"Prior experience in fintech or financial services environments, including understanding of regulatory requirements, data security, transaction processing, or banking integrations. Valuable context for understanding Plaid's mission."}
- {"name":"Developer Tools & IDE Integration","description":"Experience building IDE extensions, language server protocol implementations, or developer plugins. Understanding of how developer tools are consumed and integrated into existing workflows."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for deploying and managing scalable internal services. Essential for reliable, self-healing infrastructure supporting Plaid's internal platforms."}
- {"name":"GitHub","description":"Version control and collaboration platform. Integration point for many AI-powered developer tools and central to building the Intelligent Tooling platform."}
- {"name":"GitHub Actions","description":"CI/CD automation platform for building, testing, and deploying internal tools. Direct integration with development workflows makes it ideal for developer productivity platforms."}
- {"name":"Terraform","description":"Infrastructure-as-code tool for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure reliably. Essential for maintaining reproducible, scalable internal platforms."}
- {"name":"Datadog","description":"Comprehensive observability platform for monitoring internal systems, AI workflows, and developer tool performance. Critical for maintaining reliability and identifying optimization opportunities."}
- {"name":"Docker","description":"Containerization platform for packaging internal tools and services. Enables consistent deployment across development and production environments."}

### others

- {"name":"Large Language Models (LLMs)","description":"Understanding of modern LLM capabilities, limitations, and integration patterns. Knowledge of prompt engineering, RAG systems, and function calling for building AI-powered developer experiences."}
- {"name":"AI Agent Frameworks","description":"Familiarity with agent orchestration frameworks and patterns for building autonomous systems. Understanding of ReAct, tool use, and agent-human collaboration paradigms."}
- {"name":"Observability & Monitoring","description":"Expertise in implementing comprehensive monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting systems. Understanding of SLOs, error budgets, and production incident response."}
- {"name":"REST APIs & gRPC","description":"Strong understanding of modern API design patterns and protocols for building efficient internal communication layers in developer tooling platforms."}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Reliable, feature-rich relational database ideal for storing developer tool data, audit logs, and AI system state. Strong consistency guarantees and powerful query language support complex internal platform requirements."}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"High-performance in-memory database for caching, rate limiting, and real-time features in developer tools. Critical for ensuring responsive internal platform performance."}
- {"name":"MongoDB","description":"Flexible document database useful for storing varied AI system telemetry, logs, and flexible internal tool data structures. Horizontal scaling capabilities for growing internal platforms."}

### languages

- {"name":"Python","description":"Widely used for AI/ML systems, automation scripts, and backend services. Strong choice for rapidly iterating on AI-powered tooling and agent orchestration systems."}
- {"name":"TypeScript/JavaScript","description":"Essential for building modern web-based developer tools, IDE extensions, and full-stack internal platforms. Strong type safety and tooling ecosystem benefit developer experience."}
- {"name":"Go","description":"High-performance language commonly used for building scalable internal services, CLI tools, and infrastructure components. Excellent choice for building reliable, maintainable systems at Plaid's scale."}
- {"name":"Java","description":"Enterprise-grade language for building robust backend services and internal platforms. Mature ecosystem and strong typing provide confidence in large system development."}

### frameworks

- {"name":"React","description":"Modern frontend framework for building responsive, interactive internal tool UIs. Essential for creating developer-friendly interfaces for AI-powered workflows and tooling platforms."}
- {"name":"FastAPI","description":"High-performance Python web framework ideal for building scalable AI-powered APIs and internal services. Modern async/await patterns and automatic API documentation generation."}
- {"name":"Next.js","description":"Full-stack React framework for building internal tools with both frontend and backend logic. Server-side rendering and API routes streamline developer tool development."}
- {"name":"Spring Boot","description":"Enterprise Java framework for building microservices and internal platforms at scale. Strong ecosystem for production-grade systems requiring high reliability."}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Medical, Dental & Vision Insurance","description":"Comprehensive health coverage including preventive care, specialist access, and dental/vision benefits for you and your family."}
- {"name":"401(k) Retirement Plan","description":"Tax-advantaged retirement savings plan with potential company matching to help secure your financial future."}
- {"name":"Equity & Stock Options","description":"Participate in Plaid's growth through equity grants and stock options, aligning your success with the company's long-term performance."}
- {"name":"Flexible Work Environment","description":"Work with flexibility in location and schedule arrangements that support your productivity and work-life balance as a senior-level engineer."}
- {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Investment in your growth through conference attendance, training programs, and mentorship opportunities to advance your technical expertise."}
- {"name":"Paid Time Off","description":"Generous vacation and paid time off policies supporting your wellbeing and recovery outside of work."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 320000
- **min:** 220000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

- {"name":"Initial Conversation with Recruiter","description":"First screen with Plaid's recruiting team to understand your background, career motivations, and alignment with the Staff Engineer role. Expect 30 minutes focused on your experience with developer tools, AI systems, and technical leadership."}
- {"name":"Technical Leadership Interview","description":"Discussion with a current engineer or engineering manager about your approach to system design, technical decision-making, and how you've set architectural direction in previous roles. Bring examples of major technical contributions and architectural decisions you've led."}
- {"name":"Systems Design Interview","description":"Technical interview focused on your ability to design scalable internal systems and developer tooling. You'll walk through a system design problem, considering reliability, performance, usability for engineers, and operational aspects. Expect open-ended discussion about trade-offs and design patterns."}
- {"name":"AI & Tooling Deep Dive","description":"Focused conversation with team members building the Intelligent Tooling platform. Discuss your experience with AI systems, automation frameworks, or agentic workflows. Share examples of how you've optimized developer productivity in previous roles and your vision for the future of AI in developer tools."}
- {"name":"Collaboration & Leadership Interview","description":"Conversation exploring your collaboration style, how you've mentored engineers, and how you build influence and consensus in technical discussions. Discuss your experience working across functional teams and your approach to establishing engineering practices."}
- {"name":"Leadership Team Conversation","description":"Final conversation with Intelligent Tooling leadership about your vision for the platform, your long-term technical interests, and how you see yourself contributing to Plaid's AI-first transformation. Discuss company fit and mutual interest in working together."}

## Full 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. 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.

**Team Description:**

Plaid is evolving into an AI-first company, and Intelligent Tooling sits at the center of that transformation. The Intelligent Tooling team is being built from the ground up, and our mission is to establish the technical foundations, operating model, and internal platforms that embed AI deeply into Plaid’s coding tools, internal systems, and the entire software development lifecycle.

When we are successful, engineers across Plaid will delegate lower-leverage work to AI agents, move faster with confidence, and spend more of their time designing and inventing for customers. Intelligent Tooling owns the platforms and systems that make this possible - from AI coding integrations and SDLC agents to the internal tools that power Plaid’s operations.

**Role Description:**

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Intelligent Tooling team, you will build and operate internal systems that directly impact how engineers across Plaid do their work, and own the technical direction for major parts of that surface. This is a hands-on role with significant ownership, where success is measured by real adoption, reliability, and improvements to developer experience.

You will work on AI-powered tooling, internal platforms, and developer workflows, collaborating closely with other engineers and cross-functional partners to ship durable, high-leverage systems.

**Responsibilities:** 

* Design, build, and operate internal tools and services used by Plaid’s engineers.
* Integrate AI-powered tools and workflows into core engineering processes.
* Improve reliability, usability, and performance of existing internal platforms.
* Own systems end-to-end, including production support and iterative improvement.
* Collaborate with teammates and stakeholders to deliver practical, high-impact solutions.
* Set technical direction for major areas of the Intelligent Tooling surface and mentor other engineers

**Qualifications:** 

**Must-haves:**

* 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
* Experience building developer tooling, internal platforms, or infrastructure.
* Exposure to developing AI systems, automation, or agentic workflows.
* Hands-on experience using AI-powered developer tools.
* Strong problem-solving and collaboration skills.
* Track record of setting technical direction and leading through influence.

**Nice-to-haves:**

* Familiarity with CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, or observability tooling.
* Strong interest and excitement in leveraging AI to meaningfully improve developer productivity and engineering velocity for a broader engineering organization.

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 accommodations@plaid.com.

Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice [here](https://plaid.com/legal/#candidate-privacy-notice).  

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.