Engineering Manager - Payment Risk
Plaid
Software Engineering, Other Engineering
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 216k-367,200 / year
Posted on Nov 1, 2025
We believe that the way people interact with their finances will drastically improve in the next few years. We’re dedicated to empowering this transformation by building the tools and experiences that thousands of developers use to create their own products. Plaid powers the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life. We work with thousands of companies like Venmo, SoFi, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks to make it easy for people to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they want to use. Plaid’s network covers 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Washington D.C., London and Amsterdam.
Bank payments is the top way that money is moved in the US, with over $86 trillion moved over ACH in 2024. Many of these transactions are subject to risk from various sources, including liquidity, fraud, and abuse, which leads to losses and bad experiences for businesses and consumers alike.
Plaid’s Payment Risk team is building the future of bank payment risk tools and solutions, with the current version of our products already in heavy use by many of the largest names in fintech and beyond. We use proprietary AI and ML solutions to offer intelligent insights and decisions that save our customers billions of dollars, and are heavily investing in improving the power and reach of these solutions.
While this team directly owns customer-facing APIs, we are also responsible for integrating these solutions into Plaid’s own money movement products. We build across the stack, including data & ML infrastructure, distributed backend systems, APIs and customer-facing tooling & insights.
In this role, you will lead a team of engineers responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure and systems that power both the offline and online components of the Signal Risk Platform. This role involves close partnership with the ML and data science team developing the AI and ML models that generate the transaction risk scores for customers, as well as collaboration with product counterparts to define the strategy, vision, and concrete roadmaps for both areas. A key part of your work will be to design and build APIs and Dashboard experiences used by thousands of Plaid customers, and to partner with the engineering team on technical planning and execution, ensuring the platform maintains high reliability (many 9's) and performs up to customer expectations for critical money movement flows.
Responsibilities
- Set and execute on technical strategy across systems, data, and ML infrastructure.
- Set and maintain a high bar for quality and velocity for your team, leading by example and getting in the weeds of what your team is building.
- Set and hit ambitious goals that represent delivering value to our customers and building robust foundations.
- Hire, mentor and grow engineers across a range of seniority levels.
- Run team process, including micro and macro-execution and collaboration across functions & teams.
Requirements
- 2+ years of engineering management experience with significant experience as a software engineer.
- Experience owning a production product and working with a product manager and/or business partners to drive business impact.
- Deep experience with distributed architecture and systems.
- Track record of building and growing high performing engineering teams.
- Experience working with machine learning-based technology and/or products, including knowledge of ML & data data infrastructure.
Our mission at Plaid is to unlock financial freedom for everyone. To support that mission, we seek to build a diverse team of driven individuals who care deeply about making the financial ecosystem more equitable. We recognize that strong qualifications can come from both prior work experiences and lived experiences. We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn't fully match the job description. We are always looking for team members that will bring something unique to Plaid!
Plaid is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and values diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion or religious belief, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, military or veteran status, disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Plaid is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance with your application or interviews due to a disability, please let us know at [email protected].
216000 - 367200 USD a year
The target base salary for this position ranges from $216,000 year to $367,200/year in Zone 1. The target base salary will vary based on the job's location.
Our geographic zones are as follows:
Zone 1 - San Francisco / New York City / Seattle
Zone 2 - Los Angeles / Washington DC / Austin / Boston / Sacramento / San Diego
Zone 3 - Atlanta / Portland / Chicago / Philadelphia / Denver / Miami / Dallas / Raleigh
Zone 4 - All other US cities
The base salary range listed for this full-time position excludes commission (if applicable), equity and benefits. The pay range shown on each job posting is the minimum and maximum target for new-hire salaries. Actual pay may be higher or lower depending on factors like skills, experience, and relevant education or training.