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

Requirements

8–14 years of overall software engineering experience, with ~6+ years of that in engineering management roles
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)
Familiarity with AI security and governance risks and control designs that preserve developer velocity.
Proven track record building scalable platform capabilities and paved roads used broadly across a product focused engineering organization
Ability to architect security capabilities and controls with developer experience principles in mind
Strong cross-functional relationship-building skills, operating effectively as both a technical advisor and a delivery partner to product engineering teams
High-empathy communication skills, with the ability to represent technical work to senior leadership
Internal customer focus, with the ability to drive security maturity gains through influence rather than authority
Experience at a fintech or high-technology organization adjacent to payments or financial services
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

Benefits

Equal opportunity employer
Diversity values
Reasonable accommodations for disabilities

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

software engineeringauth systemsencryptionidentity servicesaccess servicesAI/ML platformssecurity capabilitiesencryption managementauthN/authZscalable platform capabilities

Soft Skills

leadershipmentoringcollaborationcommunicationrelationship-buildinginfluenceteam dynamicscustomer focushigh-empathy communicationrisk-based decision making