Engineering Manager

• We build the security foundation that every engineer at Plaid depends on

• The Security Engineering team is responsible for building, scaling, and evolving the core security infrastructure that enables Plaid’s product engineering teams to ship securely and at speed

• We own the secure paved roads across encryption, authN/authZ, CI/CD, data, and network security surfaces, abstracting away security complexity so developers can build at velocity with confidence

• Our mission is simple: make the secure path the easy path for every engineer at Plaid

• As the Engineering Manager for Security Engineering, you will lead a team of security engineers building and operating the foundational capabilities that underpin secure development across Plaid

• You will partner closely with the CISO and cross-functional engineering leaders to define and drive the roadmap for our platform capabilities, while ensuring our paved roads are reliable, well-adopted, and continuously maturing

• You’re a technically credible leader who earns the trust of your engineers by going deep, and earns the trust of the business by translating complex security tradeoffs into pragmatic, risk-based decisions that align with Plaid’s product goals

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of security engineers, fostering a high-performance, collaborative, and psychologically safe team culture

• Own the technical roadmap and strategic direction for Plaid’s core security capabilities across encryption, authN/authZ, CI/CD, data, and network security surfaces to secure Plaid’s AI and MCP ecosystem (internal and external MCP integrations)

• Partner with product and platform engineering teams to deeply understand their needs, and deliver self-service security infrastructure that scales across teams at varying levels of security maturity

• Partner with Data Foundation and AI teams to build secure paved roads for agentic identities and workflows (AI agents, MCP clients, service identities)

• Drive measurable improvement in secure-by-default adoption across Plaid’s engineering organization, leading with influence rather than authority

• Make pragmatic, risk-based security decisions and tradeoffs that are consistent with product roadmaps and business objectives

• Represent the team’s work and security posture clearly to Staff-level leaders including the CISO, CTO, and COO

• Actively build team stability and strong team dynamics, playing a significant role in hiring, onboarding, growing, and retaining security engineering talent

Benefits

• Vibrant offices in SF, NYC, and Raleigh-Durham—with catered meals, happy hours, and clubs to keep you connected

• Competitive pay, comprehensive health benefits, and support for fertility, mental health, and parental leave

• Lifestyle perks including home office stipends, daycare support, and commuting benefits like CitiBike and Lyft

Qualifications

• 8–14 years of overall software engineering experience, with ~6+ years of that in engineering management roles

• Familiarity with AI security and governance risks and control designs that preserve developer velocity

• Strong technical background in software engineering, with the ability to understand, evaluate, and guide work on auth systems, encryption, identity/access services, and related security domains in an AWS and K8s environment

• Experience managing engineers in a security, platform, or infrastructure context

• Experience designing and securing AI/ML/Agentic platforms (tool-calling, MCPs, and service identities)

• Ability to architect security capabilities and controls with developer experience principles in mind

• Internal customer focus, with the ability to drive security maturity gains through influence rather than authority

• Hands-on experience building user and service authN/authZ capabilities, encryption/secrets management services, or internal identity management capabilities at scale at an AWS and K8s environment

• Proven track record building scalable platform capabilities and paved roads used broadly across a product focused engineering organization

• Experience at a fintech or high-technology organization adjacent to payments or financial services

• High-empathy communication skills, with the ability to represent technical work to senior leadership

• Strong cross-functional relationship-building skills, operating effectively as both a technical advisor and a delivery partner to product engineering teams

• We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn’t fully match the job description