Staff Software Engineer, Real-Time Fraud Systems

Plaid; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 208,000 - 274,000; Full time

Job summary

Plaid is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for the Protect Core team in San Francisco. You will set technical direction for real-time Trust Index scores and fraud attributes, leading multi-quarter initiatives while staying hands-on in architecture and production code.

You will collaborate with DSML, product, and fraud researchers to identify new fraud signals and product expansions, iterating from insights to measurable customer value and enabling new integration modes.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building and operating backend or distributed systems at scale.
• Must be comfortable working hands-on directly in the codebase; hands-on builder role.
• Strong product judgment to translate problems into deliverables and tradeoffs.
• Nice-to-have: strong opinions and good product taste.
• Nice-to-have: experience building data and/or API products.
• Nice-to-have: experience in the fraud domain.
• Nice-to-have: interest in building agentic systems.

Responsibilities

• Care about product value for customers.
• Learn how customers use the product and fraud challenges; build solutions.
• Identify new fraud detection frontiers and prototype risks; productionize validated ideas.
• Collaborate with DS/ML to deliver business impact; work with data/tools.
• Lead by example on AI-assisted engineering; write linters, push code, diverse languages.
• Raise technical bar via mentorship and design reviews across the org.

Skills

Extensive experience, typically 8+ | 8

Hands-on coding

Strong product judgment

Strong opinions, conviction

Data/API products experience

Fraud domain experience

Agentic systems experience

Job description

Plaid is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for the Protect Core team in San Francisco. You will set technical direction for real-time Trust Index scores and fraud attributes, leading multi-quarter initiatives while staying hands-on in architecture and production code.

You will collaborate with DSML, product, and fraud researchers to identify new fraud signals and product expansions, iterating from insights to measurable customer value and enabling new integration modes.