Staff Machine Learning Engineer (Research Scientist) - DFAI

We are the Data Foundation & AI team within Plaid’s Data organization. Our mission is to build the shared ML and AI infrastructure that powers intelligent capabilities across Plaid’s product suite. We develop foundational systems, models, and data assets that transform Plaid’s unique financial network data into scalable, general-purpose representations that teams across the company can leverage. Our work spans the full ML lifecycle — from large-scale data curation and model pretraining to production serving, evaluation, and monitoring. Responsibilities: Owning the end-to-end technical strategy for a foundation model built on one of the world’s richest financial datasets, from pretraining architecture to production serving. Doing research that ships: driving decisions from experimentation through production systems that serve real customers and power multiple product teams. Working across the full ML stack, including pretraining objectives, architecture design, distributed training, serving infrastructure, monitoring, and cross-team integration. Setting technical direction and mentoring a high-caliber team, with your work amplifying the capabilities of engineers and product teams across Plaid. Helping hundreds of millions of consumers achieve greater financial freedom through the ML capabilities you build and ship. Qualifications: MS: 7–12+ years of industry experience with a demonstrated track record of technical leadership and production delivery. PhD: 5–9+ years of industry experience with evidence of technical leadership (tech lead, principal/staff-equivalent roles) and end-to-end production ownership. Prior technical leadership experience (tech lead, principal, or staff) with demonstrated cross-team influence and mentorship. Deep expertise in Transformers/LLMs/Foundation Models, including large-scale training or domain adaptation. End-to-end production ownership; proven track record shipping models through training, serving, monitoring, and iteration in live environments. Distributed training experience and strong Python + software engineering fundamentals at a staff level. Ability to drive technical alignment across teams: setting standards, defining integration patterns, and influencing beyond your immediate scope. Fintech / financial data domain experience — Nice to have External publications or open-source contributions — Nice to have Experience defining ML platform capabilities (serving infra, feature stores) used across multiple teams — Nice to have 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. Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here. 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 View email address on click.appcast.io. #J-18808-Ljbffr