Staff Software Engineer (Data Governance)

Join Plaid as a Staff Software Engineer on the Data Governance team. You will be responsible for enforcing Plaid's privacy commitments and regulatory obligations by building the platform and controls that govern data flow. You will lead the design of distributed backend systems, drive multi-quarter initiatives, and mentor engineers. This role requires extensive experience in building and operating backend distributed systems, strong communication skills, and a background in data privacy or compliance systems.

• Set the technical direction for how Plaid enforces data governance at scale, leading the design of distributed backend systems that reliably delete, restrict, and track data across services.
• Drive multi-quarter initiatives from ambiguous privacy and regulatory requirements through to shipped, auditable infrastructure, aligning multiple engineering teams behind a plan.
• Mentor engineers and level up the team's technical judgment; act as a technical point of contact for governance concerns raised by other teams.
• Demonstrated ability to turn ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and align multiple stakeholders behind them
• A track record of leading the design of complex systems and driving cross-team technical initiatives to completion
• Extensive experience (typically 8+ years) building and operating backend distributed systems at scale, in a language like Go, Java, or similar
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including working effectively with non-engineering partners (legal, privacy, compliance)
• Strong fundamentals in data stores, consistency, and reliability, with the judgment to reason about correctness and failure modes
• Prior experience with data privacy, governance, or compliance systems (e.g., GDPR/CCPA deletion, data-use/consent enforcement, cataloging/classification, or auditing)
• 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!