Senior Data Engineer - Data Engineering

Plaid; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 190,800 - 286,800; Full time

Job summary

Plaid is seeking an experienced Data Engineer in Seattle, WA, to lead data engineering projects and create data models for large datasets. The role demands 4+ years of relevant experience, proficiency in SQL and Python, and familiarity with data orchestration tools like DBT and Airflow. Responsibilities include building SQL pipelines and ensuring data quality. The compensation range is competitive, offering a salary between $190.8K and $286.8K depending on experience and qualifications.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of dedicated data engineering experience.
• Experience building and maintaining large data pipelines.
• Comfortable with SQL and data orchestration tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead data engineering projects across the company.
• Own core SQL and Python data pipelines.
• Create well-documented data with quality definitions.

Skills

Data engineering experience

Building data models

Modern SQL orchestration

Real-time pipelines

Schema design

Collaborative approach

Tools

SQL

Python

DBT

Airflow

Redshift

Spark

Kafka

Job 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.

Making data‑driven decisions is key to Plaid's culture. To support that, we need to scale our data systems while maintaining correct and complete data. We provide golden datasets and tooling to teams across engineering, product, and business and help them explore our data quickly and safely to get the data insights they need, which ultimately helps Plaid serve our customers more effectively. In addition, Plaid will not be successful if we can't move quickly. We build the data systems and tools that enable everyone at Plaid to be data‑driven, making analytics easy, obvious, and proactive across the company.

Data Engineers heavily leverage SQL and Python to build data workflows that integrate with our Golang applications. We use tools like DBT, Airflow, Redshift, Atlan, and Retool to orchestrate data pipelines and define workflows. We work with engineers, product managers, business intelligence, data analysts, and many other teams to build Plaid's data strategy and a data‑first mindset.

You will be in a high impact role that will directly enable business leaders to make faster and more informed business judgements based on the datasets you build. You will have the opportunity to carve out the ownership and scope of internal datasets and visualizations across Plaid which is a currently unowned area that we intend to take over and build SLAs on. You will have the opportunity to learn best practices and up‑level your technical skills from our strong DE team and from the broader Data Platform team. You will collaborate with and have strong and cross‑functional partnerships with literally all teams at Plaid from Engineering to Product to Marketing/Finance etc.

Responsibilities

• Understand different aspects of the Plaid product and strategy to inform golden dataset choices, design and data usage principles.
• Have data quality and performance top of mind while designing datasets.
• Lead key data engineering projects that drive collaboration across the company.
• Advocate for adopting industry tools and practices at the right time.
• Own core SQL and Python data pipelines that power our data lake and data warehouse.
• Create well‑documented data with defined dataset quality, uptime, and usefulness.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of dedicated data engineering experience, solving complex data pipelines issues at scale.
• Experience building data models and data pipelines on top of large datasets (in the order of 500TB to petabytes).
• Comfortable with SQL as a flexible and extensible tool, and with modern SQL data orchestration tools like DBT, Mode, and Airflow.
• Experience working with different performant warehouses and data lakes; Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks.
• Experience building and maintaining batch and real‑time pipelines using technologies like Spark, Kafka.
• Appreciation for the importance of schema design, and can evolve an analytics schema on top of unstructured data.
• Enjoy trying out new technologies and producing proof‑of‑concepts that balance technical advancement and user experience / adoption.
• Deep technical focus on managing, deploying, and improving low‑level data infrastructure.
• Empathetic collaborative approach with stakeholders, listening, asking right questions, and coming up with best solutions while balancing infra and business needs.
• Champion for data privacy and integrity, acting in the best interest of consumers.

Equal Opportunity Employer

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 [e-mail].

Compensation Range: $190.8K - $286.8K