Staff Machine Learning Engineer (Research Scientist) - DFAI
At a glance
AI generatedTL;DR
As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer on Plaid’s Data Foundation & AI team in San Francisco, you will lead the technical strategy and development of foundational models that power intelligent capabilities across Plaid’s product suite. Your responsibilities include overseeing the full ML lifecycle from data curation to production deployment, establishing rigorous evaluation frameworks, and building scalable pipelines. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to define how products integrate with foundation models, enabling reusable ML infrastructure. With deep expertise in Transformers/LLMs/Foundation Models and strong Python skills, you will drive technical alignment across teams, set standards for integration patterns, and mentor engineers at various levels. This role involves working on one of the world's richest financial datasets, transforming it into scalable representations that benefit millions of consumers seeking greater financial freedom.
Skills
What you'll do
- Leading the technical strategy for foundation models built on Plaid’s financial dataset.
- Overseeing the full ML lifecycle, from pretraining to production deployment and monitoring.
- Driving decisions in model architecture, fine-tuning approaches, and cross-team integration.
- Establishing rigorous evaluation frameworks to measure model performance across use cases.
- Mentoring engineers and elevating technical standards for machine learning infrastructure.
What we're looking for
- MS or PhD with significant industry experience and proven technical leadership.
- Deep expertise in Transformers, LLMs, Foundation Models, and large-scale training.
- Proven track record of end-to-end production ownership for ML models.
- Strong Python skills and distributed training experience at a staff level.
- Ability to mentor engineers and set technical direction across teams.
- Experience defining and implementing ML platform capabilities used by multiple teams.
Employer
About Plaid
Plaid is a financial technology company that builds a data network powering digital finance applications, enabling consumers to securely connect their financial accounts to apps and services. Industry: Financial Technology & Data Infrastructure
Plaid currently has 58 open roles on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs $204,156–$281,196 across 58 roles with salary data.
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