Staff Engineer, Engineering-wide

Plaud; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

ESOP

High-impact work

AI tools access

Top-spec laptops

Annual offsites

Job summary

Plaud Inc. in San Francisco seeks a Senior IC to rotate across product, platform and infrastructure teams, tackling the hardest engineering problems.

You will write production Go/Python code, design cross-team APIs, and mentor engineers globally in a fast-moving, ESOP-enabled environment. Join a team driving state-of-the-art AI tools, multi-team collaboration, and scalable systems across devices, mobile clients, and cloud-native services.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, with 3+ years at staff level or equivalent.
• Expertise across multiple areas (backend, mobile, data pipelines, ML/LLM) and ability to ramp on unfamiliar code.
• Proven track record leading cross-team work with design docs and migrations.
• Strong Go or Python, plus a client stack (iOS/Android/React/Electron), and cloud-native experience (AWS/GCP, Kubernetes).
• Experience shipping LLM features in production with retrieval, prompt pipelines, evals, latency and cost management.
• Excellent written communication and comfort across time zones/cultures.
• Low ego and high ownership; able to make the team shine.
• Open-source contributions or talks a plus.
• Routinely uses AI tools; able to demo usage from the last two weeks.

Responsibilities

• Rotate across product, platform and infrastructure teams to tackle the hardest problems.
• Deeply collaborate on migrations, reliability, CI, and AI quality gaps and ship fixes.
• Write production code and participate in designs across teams.
• Lead cross-team designs for APIs and data contracts.
• Raise engineering standards: testing, observability, runbooks, CI/CD.
• Develop end-to-end understanding of the system and guide architecture decisions.
• Mentor senior engineers in US and Asia.
• Advance AI-native engineering practices.

Skills

Go or Python

Mobile stack

Cloud/Kubernetes

LLM deployments

Cross-team leadership

Excellent communication

Tools

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

GitHub

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. 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 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.

This senior IC role has no fixed team. You would rotate across Plaud's product, platform and infrastructure teams, joining whichever team has the hardest problem: a migration, an on-call mess, a cross-team API or an AI quality gap. You fix it with them and leave the patterns behind. The stack runs from devices and mobile to Go/Python services and LLM pipelines, and you'd report to the head of engineering.

What You Will Do

• Rotate across Plaud's product, platform and infrastructure teams based on business needs, working with whichever team has the highest-leverage engineering problem.
• Go deep with each team on its hardest problem, such as a stalled migration, a reliability or on-call problem, a slow CI pipeline, or an AI quality gap, and ship the fix together.
• Write production code: design, build, review and ship, not just advise.
• Lead technical designs that cross team boundaries, including shared APIs, data contracts between teams, and handoffs between product and platform teams.
• Raise the engineering bar in every team you join: testing, observability, runbooks, code review, and evals in CI/CD.
• Build an end-to-end understanding of the whole system, from the device and capture pipeline to transcription, AI notes, AI agent features and the services underneath. Use it to guide architecture decisions across the org with Gene and the eng leads.
• Mentor senior engineers in the US and Asia, and help grow the next generation of tech leads.
• Explore and drive AI-native engineering practice, showing teams how AI-assisted development speeds up real work.

Skills, Qualifications And Experience We Look For

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years at Staff level or equivalent scope.
• Deep expertise in more than one area, such as backend distributed systems, mobile or client, data pipelines, or ML/LLM systems, and the ability to ramp up quickly on unfamiliar code.
• Proven track record leading technical work across teams, with design docs and migrations that other engineers adopted.
• Strong in Go or Python, plus at least one client stack (iOS, Android, React or Electron), with cloud-native experience (AWS/GCP, Kubernetes).
• Experience shipping LLM features in production, including retrieval, prompt pipelines, evals, and managing latency and cost.
• Excellent written communication and comfort working across time zones and cultures.
• Low ego and high ownership: happy to make the team look good and move on.
• Recognized technical influence through open-source contributions, highly starred GitHub repositories, conference talks or technical publications is a plus.
• Routinely uses AI tools in daily work and can demo usage from the last two weeks during the interview.

What We Offer

• Meaningful Ownership An Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that gives a real stake in Plaud’s long-term success.
• High-Impact Environment Work in a fast-moving, product-driven environment where your ideas directly shape the future of AI productivity.
• 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.
• Best-in-Class Equipment Choice of top-spec laptops, high-performance workstation setups, and cutting-edge Plaud devices for all new hires.
• 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.