Head of Detection and Response, Plaid
$192-372.2k
Data network powering the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life
Job no longer available
Data network powering the tools millions of people rely on to live a healthier financial life
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$192-372.2k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To unlock financial freedom for everyone.
Role
Who you are
- 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
- We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn't fully match the job description
What the job involves
- 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
Our take
Plaid builds infrastructure that allows consumers to interact with their bank account on the web through a number of third-party applications, like Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, Acorns and LendingClub.
Plaid has integrated with over 12,000 financial institutions in the US, Canada, the UK and Europe. And about a quarter of people living in North America with bank accounts have linked with Plaid through at least one of the hundreds of apps that leverage Plaid’s application program interfaces (APIs).
The platform allows companies to create financial services applications without having to hire their own team of engineers to build out a tool that connects apps to its users’ bank accounts. This is very valuable in a world where there are increasing number of fintechs, so the demand for Plaid's services are only going to grow.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Apr 2025
$575m
LATE VC
Apr 2021
$425m
SERIES D
Total funding: $1.3bn
Company 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
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Zach Perret
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously, Zach was a Consultant at Bain and a Research Fellow and Trustee at Duke before co-founding Plaid ion 2012.
Salary benchmarks
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