Staff Software Engineer - Europe

Job description

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. Plaid Europe is building Plaid in Europe—the open banking platform that makes international expansion one click away for fintechs who want to scale globally. We are the only transatlantic open banking provider, uniquely positioned to help fintechs scale globally with a single Plaid integration. Our team localises, scales, and operates the bank connectivity layer that powers payments, underwriting, onboarding, and identity—abstracting fragmented European rails and regulations into a single, reliable platform. The team owns four core pillars: - Account-to-Account Payments - Cash Flow & Income Insights for Credit - Bank Connectivity Across Europe - Consumer Experience This team operates at the intersection of distributed systems, financial infrastructure, and consumer UX. We solve hard problems in payments reliability, data quality, regulatory complexity, and cross-market expansion—enabling fintechs to launch in new countries with minimal additional engineering effort. We are a high-impact, cross-functional engineering team working closely with US platform teams, GTM, compliance, and operations to make Plaid the default open banking layer for global fintechs operating in Europe. You will serve as the technical leader for Plaid's Europe engineering team, setting direction across a broad product surface area while staying hands-on in the codebase. You'll partner closely with the Engineering Manager and PM to turn product strategy into executable roadmaps, and maintain a strong connection to US platform teams to keep Europe aligned with company-wide engineering investments. Responsibilities - Set technical direction across Europe's product surface area, translating product strategy into clear engineering roadmaps with crisp scoping, sequencing, and tradeoffs. - Stay hands-on—owning high-leverage projects, spiking and prototyping to de-risk, or going deep on the hardest parts of projects others own, depending on the quarter. - Own technical excellence for the team—setting and holding a high bar through design reviews, architectural decisions, and code quality. - Partner closely with the EM and PM to identify opportunities, make tradeoffs, and keep the team focused on the highest-leverage work. - Maintain a strong connection to US engineering and platform teams, ensuring Europe's requirements shape platform decisions and the team leverages shared infrastructure rather than building in isolation. Qualifications - 8+ years of software engineering experience, including operating as a technical lead on a product engineering team. - Strong programming skills in Go, Python, or similar backend languages. - Experience operating and scaling high-availability systems (four 9s) in production—understands the reliability and correctness bar required for critical infrastructure. - Demonstrated track record of effective delegation—has scaled their impact by enabling senior engineers to own technical direction, not by doing everything themselves. - Strong product engineering instinct—can take a product strategy and translate it into a crisp engineering roadmap with clear scoping, sequencing, and tradeoffs. - Experience operating and scaling high-availability systems in production. - [Nice to have] Payments domain experience—has worked in payments infrastructure, processing, or a related domain. - [Nice to have] Experience working across time zones with distributed engineering teams. - [Nice to have] Fintech or financial infrastructure experience beyond payments (e.g., credit, lending, identity). - [Nice to have] Familiarity with open banking APIs and bank connectivity patterns. 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 accommodations@plaid.com. Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here https://plaid.com/legal/#candidate-privacy-notice. Additional compensation in the form(s) of equity and/or commission are dependent on the position offered. Plaid provides a comprehensive benefit plan, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k). Pay is based on factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's work experience and skillset, and location. Pay and benefits are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefit plans.