Head of Platform Engineering

Plaud Inc.; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 350,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful Ownership (ESOP)

High-Impact Environment

Cutting-Edge AI Tools

Best-in-Class Equipment

Team & Culture

Job summary

Plaud Inc. in the United States seeks a senior Platform Engineering leader to shape the core platform that powers our AI-enabled professional tools.

You will own reliability, SSO and access control, API platforms, billing, and the shared design system, leading teams across the US and Asia.

This senior role offers ownership, impact, and exposure to cutting-edge AI tools in a fast-moving product-driven environment.

Qualifications

• Extensive software engineering background with leadership of platform teams.
• Experience building identity, permissions or APIs for enterprise SaaS.
• Proven track record running distributed teams across regions.
• Strong backend expertise in Go or Java and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience with SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA controls and audits.
• Billing and entitlement systems experience (Stripe or similar).
• Open-source contributions or talks are a plus.
• Routinely uses AI tools and can demo usage during interviews.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the strategy for Plaud's Platform Engineering across US and Asia.
• Lead teams responsible for SSO/OAuth/SCIM, API platforms, billing, storage, design system, and search.
• Own reliability, SLOs, and on-call for all Platform services.
• Hire, mentor, and grow senior engineers and leads in US and Asia; scale billing logic.
• Publish quarterly Platform roadmap with reliable dates and clear interfaces.
• Set engineering standards for shared systems and empower teams to contribute changes.
• Collaborate with lead architect in Asia to ensure overlapping daily work.
• Run Platform as a product with defined interfaces and customer feedback.

Skills

Software engineering

Leadership

API platforms

Platform as a product

Distributed teams

Go

Java

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Security compliance

Billing systems

Open source

AI tooling

Tools

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Job description

About Plaud Inc.

Plaud is building the real-world AI interface for professionals to amplify intelligence, elevate productivity and performance, loved by over 3,000,000 users worldwide since 2023. With a mission to amplify human intelligence, Plaud captures, structures, and compounds the intelligence generated in conversations — so humans can think better, decide faster, and execute with clarity.

Plaud Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated, San Francisco-based company. With GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and EN 18031 compliance, Plaud is committed to the highest standards of data security and privacy protection.

To learn more about Plaud, please visit https://www.plaud.ai and follow along on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Why You Should Join Us

Plaud is building the next generation intelligence infrastructure and interfaces to capture, extract, and utilize intelligence from what people say, hear, see, and think.

• Plaud is a bootstrapped, skyrocketing, profitable company with a $300M revenue run rate achieved in just three years.

• Define the next-gen paradigm for human-AI interaction.

• Gain exposure to cutting-edge AI for Pro tools and play a direct role in our global expansion.

• Work with passionate teammates who value innovation, collaboration, and customer success.

• Grow your career in a culture that champions continuous learning and fast career development.

• Market-competitive compensation, global exposure, and a vibrant, creativity-fueled work atmosphere.

Plaud's Platform team builds the shared services every product team relies on: sign-in and enterprise single sign-on, user permissions, integrations with other apps, our public API, billing and payments, file storage and sync, the common app framework and design system, internal support tools, and search. You would lead the team across the US and Asia, and build the enterprise foundations that take a $300M consumer business upmarket.

What you will do

• Define and drive the strategy for Plaud's Platform Engineering organization, with teams in the US and Asia. Platform builds each shared service once and runs it as a product for the teams that use it.

• Lead the teams that own: sign-in and access control (SSO/SAML, OAuth, SCIM, MFA, roles and permissions, audit logs), integrations with third-party apps, the public API and developer tools (API, CLI, MCP), billing and payments, file storage and sync, the shared app framework (design system, release process, feature flags, experiments), internal support and admin tools, and search.

• Build the enterprise foundations Plaud needs to move upmarket: SSO, SCIM, fine-grained permissions, audit, and regional data residency with Infrastructure.

• Run Platform as a product: every service has clear internal customers, a documented interface, dated commitments, and regular feedback from the teams that use it.

• Gather requests from product teams each quarter and publish one Platform roadmap with dates the company can rely on.

• Set engineering standards for shared systems, so other teams can contribute changes themselves with your design sign-off instead of waiting on you.

• Lead a team spread across the US and Asia through written specs, a fixed daily overlap, and a close partnership with your lead architect in Asia.

• Own reliability, SLOs and on-call for every Platform service, working with Infrastructure on production access and deployment pipelines.

• Hire, mentor and grow senior engineers and team leads in the US and Asia, and over time bring billing and subscription logic into Platform.

Skills, qualifications and experience we look for

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading platform or infrastructure-adjacent teams of 15+ engineers.

• Proven track record building identity, permissions or API platforms for enterprise SaaS, such as SSO/SAML, SCIM, RBAC/ABAC, multi-tenant workspace models or public APIs.

• Experience running an internal platform as a product, with clear interfaces, SLOs and customer feedback loops.

• Demonstrated success leading distributed teams across the US and Asia.

• Deep backend expertise in Go, Java or similar, with strong distributed systems and cloud-native architecture skills (AWS/GCP, Kubernetes).

• Experience building under SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA controls and supporting audits.

• Experience with billing and entitlement systems (Stripe, Metronome or similar) is a plus.

• Recognized technical influence through open-source contributions, conference talks or technical publications is a plus.

• Routinely uses AI tools in daily work and can demo recent usage during the interview.

What we offer

1. Meaningful Ownership An Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that gives a real stake in Plaud’s long-term success.

2. High-Impact Environment Work in a fast-moving, product-driven environment where your ideas directly shape the future of AI productivity.

3. Cutting-Edge AI Tools for Productivity Access to best-in-class AI tools, including Gemini, Claude Code, and other frontier AI systems to maximize engineering and execution efficiency.

4. Best-in-Class Equipment Choice of top-spec laptops, high-performance workstation setups, and cutting-edge Plaud devices for all new hires.

5. Team & Culture Annual company offsites, team events, and a culture that values craftsmanship, ownership, and velocity.

Disclaimer: Plaud is and will continue to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.