Staff Software Engineer, Data Governance & Privacy

Plaid; New York (NY); On-site; USD 207,600 - 273,600; Full time

Job summary

Plaid is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Data Governance in the United States. You will set the technical direction for enforcing data governance at scale, design distributed backend systems, and lead multi-quarter initiatives spanning dozens of services.

You will stay hands-on with high-risk code and mentor others to raise the technical bar. You will collaborate with Legal, Privacy, Security, and product teams to translate obligations into controllable infrastructure and data handling

Qualifications

• Extensive experience (8+ years) building and operating backend distributed systems.
• Proven ability to lead cross-team technical initiatives to completion.
• Strong fundamentals in data stores, consistency, and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical architecture for Plaid's data-governance platform.
• Lead multi-quarter, cross-team governance initiatives and ensure auditability.
• Drive design reviews and set engineering standards for reliability and correctness.
• Partner with Legal, Privacy, Security, and product-engineering to shape governance requirements.
• Mentor engineers and act as a technical contact for governance concerns.

Skills

Backend systems design

Cross-team leadership

Data stores & reliability

Regulatory & privacy alignment

Excellent communication

Job description

Plaid is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for Data Governance in the United States. You will set the technical direction for enforcing data governance at scale, design distributed backend systems, and lead multi-quarter initiatives spanning dozens of services.

You will stay hands-on with high-risk code and mentor others to raise the technical bar. You will collaborate with Legal, Privacy, Security, and product teams to translate obligations into controllable infrastructure and data handling