Experienced Engineering Manager, Payments

Plaid•New York, NY

About The Position

Plaid is hiring an Experienced Engineering Manager to lead its Payments engineering organization, which consists of teams covering account verification, payment risk, and money movement. The role partners with the Product Area Lead to co-own strategy and execution for one of Plaid’s largest and fastest-growing businesses. The manager will lead three engineering managers, set the organization’s hiring bar, and guide technical direction across a platform where reliability and correctness have significant financial consequences. The position involves balancing investment in technical foundations with product delivery. The engineering organization supports verification infrastructure, the Signal risk platform and its machine-learning and data pipelines, money-movement rails, and customer-facing APIs and dashboards. The role works closely with product, data science, operations, compliance, go-to-market, and customers to advance Plaid Payments’ shift toward turnkey verification, guaranteed payments, and fully managed payment flows. Plaid’s mission is to unlock financial freedom for everyone. The company values building a diverse team and is an equal opportunity employer. Plaid provides reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities during recruiting.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience.
4+ years of engineering management experience, including at least 1 year managing managers.
Experience leading an engineering organization of 20+ through an engineering-manager layer.
Experience owning transactional, high-reliability systems where correctness and availability have direct financial consequences.
Track record of building technical foundations that created compounding returns.
Experience working as a true partner with product, data, operations, and business teams.

Nice To Haves

Bank payments experience, including ACH, RTP, FedNow, or card rails.
Experience shipping ML-powered risk or fraud products.
Experience leading AI transformation in an engineering organization.

Responsibilities

Set engineering strategy for Payments with the Product Area Lead, balancing product delivery against foundational investment across three teams.
Manage three engineering managers by coaching them, calibrating performance, and building the management bench.
Own technical direction for the payments platform, including verification infrastructure, the Signal risk platform and its ML and data pipelines, money-movement rails, and customer-facing APIs and dashboards.
Maintain the reliability bar for systems where failures can move money incorrectly.
Drive recruiting and hiring across the organization, set the hiring bar, and own pipeline health.
Drive overall product-area strategy with Product leadership.
Partner with product, data science, PMM, GTM, payment operations, compliance, and customers.