Staff Software Engineer AI-Powered Developer Tools

Plaid; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 208,000 - 307,000; Full time

Job summary

Plaid is evolving into an AI-first company, with the Intelligent Tooling team building the technical foundations and internal platforms powering AI in the software lifecycle. You will own major parts of the surface, ship durable tooling, and improve developer experience across Plaid’s engineering teams.

This hands-on Staff Software Engineer role emphasizes ownership, reliability, and measurable adoption of AI-enabled tooling, collaborating with engineers and cross-functional partners to

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience building developer tooling or internal platforms.
• Exposure to AI systems, automation, or agentic workflows.
• Strong problem-solving and collaboration, with tendency to lead through influence.
• Interest in leveraging AI to improve developer productivity and velocity for large engineering org.

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 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 experience

Dev tooling

AI systems exposure

Problem solving

AI-driven productivity

Tools

CI/CD

Cloud infrastructure

Observability tooling

AI-powered dev tools

Job description

Plaid is evolving into an AI-first company, with the Intelligent Tooling team building the technical foundations and internal platforms powering AI in the software lifecycle. You will own major parts of the surface, ship durable tooling, and improve developer experience across Plaid’s engineering teams.

This hands-on Staff Software Engineer role emphasizes ownership, reliability, and measurable adoption of AI-enabled tooling, collaborating with engineers and cross-functional partners to