Senior Software Engineer - Product Security

Plaid; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Plaid is seeking a Senior Product Security Engineer to design and build production‑grade security capabilities and libraries, accelerating secure development across Plaid's platforms.

You will own the VM Orchestration service, automate vulnerability workflows, and partner with product and engineering teams to raise our security posture while enabling faster delivery for developers.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience building and scaling production services.
• Ability to architect and build software systems to meet security, privacy, usability, scalability and cost requirements.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of security capabilities to manage vulnerabilities lifecycle.
• Own and maintain Plaid’s VM Orchestration service.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to implement security controls.
• Educate and support other teams to improve security in their products.
• Assist incident response and security awareness initiatives.
• Automate vulnerability detection and remediation within CI/CD pipelines.
• Replace manual gates with engineered security solutions.
• Communicate project progress to managers and teams.

Skills

Security engineering

Vulnerability management

Cloud security

Distributed systems

CI/CD tooling

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

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, Seattle, Washington D.C., Raleigh, London, and Amsterdam.

The Product Security team is responsible for managing the security processes, policies and controls to secure Plaid’s developer and consumer facing products. The product security team is focused on areas like Application Security, Vulnerability Management, Secure Development Lifecycle, Penetration Testing and Cloud Security. We build the services and components that protect Plaid’s products. We move security "left" by engineering common libraries, modules, and workflows that make the secure path the easiest path for all Plaid engineers.

Plaid is looking for a Product Security Engineer who is a builder to join our Product Security team.

Unlike traditional Product security roles, this position is for a Senior software engineer who wants to solve security challenges at scale by designing and building production‑grade services, libraries, and frameworks. Our goal is to make the "secure path" the only path for Plaid developers.

The Role

• You will lead, design and develop security capabilities to manage vulnerabilities lifecycle and automate workflows to reduce KTLO toil.
• You will own, maintain, and build Plaid’s VM Orchestration service and build solutions to eliminate the entire vulnerability classes.
• You will also partner with product and engineering teams to architect and build security controls to make our products even more secure.
• You will consult with product engineers to ensure Plaid services meet security standards.
• You will help educate and support other engineering teams to improve security in their own products and services.
• You will assist with Plaid’s incident response and security awareness programs.
• You will collaborate with other security platform members and build necessary engineering solutions to meet their needs.

Responsibilities

• Build the secure engineering foundations that secure the future of digital finance.
• Develop maintainable and secure software to enhance Plaid's security posture and create paved roads for developers for easy and default integration of security controls.
• Design, develop, and maintain security-critical services and components.
• Develop internal tooling to automate vulnerability detection, dependency management, and remediation workflows within the CI/CD pipeline.
• Replace manual security gates with engineered solutions that allow product teams to ship faster and more securely.
• Communicate effectively with managers and team members regarding project deliverables and progress.
• Design and implement technical solutions that align with the evolving needs of the business.
• Proactively identify and address security vulnerabilities in products and services.
• Actively participate in incident response and security awareness initiatives.

Qualifications

• 5 + years of professional experience building and scaling production services
• Ability to architect and build software systems to meet security, privacy, usability, scalability and cost requirements.

While these experience and characteristics are not prerequisites, candidates who possess them would be well-suited for the role:

• Experience building systems or services related to vulnerability management, data encryption, key management, secret management, user authentication, service authentication, authorization systems, and security policy enforcement.
• Experience designing distributed systems and microservices with a focus on performance and reliability.
• Familiarity with modern cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform) and how to integrate security controls into them.
• A passion for creating tools and libraries that other engineers love to use..
• Passionate about educating others on security and privacy.

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 [e-mail].

Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here.

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.