Staff Product Manager - AI & Data Foundations

Plaid•San Francisco, CA

16h

About The Position

As a Product Manager on the AI & Data Foundations team, you will build the shared platforms that power Plaid’s AI and data capabilities. This is early-stage, hands-on work: you’ll partner with data, ML, and platform engineers to take capabilities from 0→1 and scale them into infrastructure that is accessible, reliable, and easy to use across Plaid. Your scope will span our AI platform (e.g., LLM gateway, eval infrastructure), our data platform (e.g., Databricks, AI-powered data tooling), and the systems connecting the two. This role is for an experienced platform PM who is excited about the rapidly evolving intersection of data infrastructure and AI. You are technically fluent, strategic, and execution-oriented, and know how to turn emerging capabilities into reliable platforms, primitives, and tools that other teams can build on.

Requirements

8+ years of product management experience including direct experience building AI/ML platform systems, applied intelligence products, or other data infrastructure from concept to production
Deep technical fluency in modern data and AI/ML systems, including how data is stored and processed and how models are developed, evaluated, deployed, and monitored. You can engage deeply with engineers and data scientists on architecture and technical trade-offs without needing to be the engineer in the room.
Demonstrated success operating in ambiguous, early-stage environments, turning loosely defined problems into decisions, shipped capabilities, and measurable adoption or impact.
Ability to operate in a fast-paced startup environment
Platform mindset and experience building scalable developer or data platforms through well-designed primitives, APIs, and frameworks.
Strategic and executional range. Skilled at setting the long-term vision while also delivering near-term experiments, specs, prototypes, and launches.
Strong communicator and cross-functional leader who can translate complex technical concepts into clear narratives to drive decisions for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Commitment to responsible AI and transparency, especially in regulated or high-trust domains.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with LLMs, embeddings, or agentic systems in production.
Experience building AI developer tooling in production.
Familiarity with applied AI in regulated or high-trust domains such as fintech, identity, or risk.

Responsibilities

Define the vision, roadmap, and success metrics for the shared platforms that power data and AI development across Plaid.
Partner with data, ML, and platform engineers to design and ship foundational capabilities spanning AI infrastructure, developer tooling, data platforms, pipelines, quality, and governance.
Build platforms that Plaid teams choose to use. Develop a deep understanding of internal users, remove friction from common workflows, and measure success through adoption, developer velocity, reliability, and quality.
Balance immediate needs from product teams with longer-term platform investments, identifying where Plaid should standardize, build shared primitives, enable experimentation, and/or leverage an existing external solution.
Partner with product, engineering, data, research, and security to identify shared needs and embed foundational AI and data capabilities across Plaid.
Translate complex technical decisions and platform trade-offs into clear narratives that enable decisions across technical and non-technical stakeholders.