Senior Software Engineer - AI Tooling

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, Seattle, Washington D.C., Raleigh, London, and Amsterdam.

Team:

Plaid is becoming an AI-first company, and Intelligent Tooling builds internal platforms and tools to lead the transformation. Our biggest opportunity isn't just better tools for engineers, it's extending AI-native internal tooling to the rest of Plaid. Tools built for engineers assume things non-engineers don't have: local toolchains, monorepos, engineer credentials, PR-based workflows. That mismatch means Ops, Support, and other teams can't easily inherit what we build for engineering. They need their own path and we're building that path.

Role:

As a Senior Software Engineer on Intelligent Tooling, you will build and operate internal systems that empower non engineering teams to automate their workflows with AI. You will own the product and platform layer for internal tools, including the constraints and infrastructure that keep those tools safe and maintainable.

There's no existing playbook for this at Plaid. You will define what the right non-eng AI surface looks like, ship its first durable versions, and partner closely with internal users to make sure it solves real problems. You will act as the engineering point of contact embedded with non-engineering teams, running discovery and translating their operational needs into shipped software. What you build here becomes how non-engineering teams at Plaid work with AI.

Responsibilities:

Design, build, and operate internal tools and platform capabilities for high-leverage non-engineering workflows

Translate ambiguous internal pain points into simple, durable software products

Define platform constraints for auth, runtime, storage, deployment, and maintenance so internal tools are safe for broader use

Build with strong product judgment, balancing flexibility with clear boundaries between what belongs in Retool, Scaffold, and a new AI-native internal tool surface

Partner with Security, Infrastructure, and internal stakeholder teams to ship systems that are reliable in production

Own systems end-to-end, including implementation, rollout, support, and iterative improvement

Qualifications:

Must have:

5+ years of professional software engineering experience

Strong experience building and operating production systems

Experience building internal tools, platforms, or workflow software

Strong product judgment and communication in ambiguous spaces

Hands-on experience using AI-powered development tools, agents, or automation

Strong builder mindset; comfortable creating the first version of a product surface that does not yet have a clear industry template

Nice to have:

Experience with developer tooling, internal platforms, or infra-adjacent systems

Experience with auth, service accounts, constrained runtimes, or internal security boundaries