Staff Software Engineer - AI-Powered Developer Tooling

Plaid; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

401(k)

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Job summary

Plaid, headquartered in San Francisco, is transforming the software development lifecycle with AI-powered tooling and internal platforms. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will influence technical direction, own critical systems end-to-end, and partner with engineers across Plaid to raise productivity and velocity.

You’ll build and operate internal tools, integrate AI workflows, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to ship high-leverage solutions that improve developer experience.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience building developer tooling, internal platforms, or infrastructure.
• Exposure to developing AI systems, automation, or agentic workflows.
• Strong problem-solving and collaboration skills, with a track record of setting technical direction and leading through influence.
• Strong interest and excitement in leveraging AI to meaningfully improve developer productivity and engineering velocity for a broader engineering organization.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate internal tools and services used by Plaid’s engineers.
• Integrate AI-powered tools and workflows into core engineering processes.
• Improve reliability, usability, and performance of existing internal platforms.
• Own systems end-to-end, including production support and iterative improvement.
• Collaborate with teammates and stakeholders to deliver practical, high-impact solutions.
• Set technical direction for major areas of the Intelligent Tooling surface and mentor other engineers.

Skills

8+ years exp

Developer tooling

AI systems exposure

Leadership influence

Collaboration skills

Tools

CI/CD tooling

Cloud infrastructure

Observability tooling

Job description

Plaid, headquartered in San Francisco, is transforming the software development lifecycle with AI-powered tooling and internal platforms. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will influence technical direction, own critical systems end-to-end, and partner with engineers across Plaid to raise productivity and velocity.

You’ll build and operate internal tools, integrate AI workflows, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to ship high-leverage solutions that improve developer experience.