Staff Software Engineer - AI Applications

Plaid

Quick summary

Work type: On-site
Location: San Francisco, CA
Salary: $228,360–$337,260 / yr
Posted: 78 days ago
Nearby: 99+ roles within 25 mi

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $196k

This role $283k

$125k most similar roles pay here $360k

This role pays more than 96% of similar roles. Most pay $163,312–$227,837 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $283k versus about $196k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

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 78 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $190,800–$262,800 across 78 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Plaid

At a glance

TL;DR · Staff Software Engineer - AI Applications

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Join Plaid’s AI Applications Team as a senior engineer to lead projects that integrate Plaid with AI providers and enhance customer experiences through conversational interfaces. You will design scalable backend services, APIs, and intuitive frontend applications while collaborating across functions to implement AI-powered solutions. Responsibilities include developing preferred integration patterns for AI customers, refining consumer link experiences, and architecting trust layers for agentic commerce. Ideal candidates have experience building backend services with microservices, working with LLMs, and fine-tuning models in production. Strong debugging skills, user research expertise, and a passion for GenAI applications are essential. Familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and modern frontend frameworks is beneficial as you contribute to Plaid’s transformation into an AI-first company.

Skills

LLMs Prompt engineering Fine-tuning RAG Vector database Embedding models Agent orchestration framework Evaluation and monitoring framework Streaming SSE HTML CSS JavaScript Python Docker CI/CD Kubernetes PostgreSQL AWS GitHub MVP

What you'll do

Design and develop scalable backend services and APIs for AI-powered products.
Architect and implement GenAI features in collaboration with cross-functional teams.
Execute rapid experiments to explore potential business impacts of emerging AI capabilities.
Balance creative exploration with rigorous evaluation of technical feasibility and impact.
Extend existing AI-powered customer support systems to enhance user experience.
Define integration patterns for Plaid’s services within AI ecosystems.

What we're looking for

Experience building backend services and working with microservices architectures.
Hands-on experience with LLMs to build and ship products using prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and RAG.
Strong debugging and monitoring skills for production systems.
Ability to understand customer needs through user research and rapid experimentation.
Expertise in designing scalable GenAI-powered solutions and evaluating their technical feasibility.

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