Senior Machine Learning Engineer (Research Scientist) - DFAI

About the Team The Data Foundation and AI team within Plaid’s Data organization builds the shared machine learning and AI infrastructure that powers capabilities across Plaid’s product suite. Our team transforms Plaid’s unique financial network data into scalable, general‑purpose representations that can be leveraged by teams throughout the company. We own the full lifecycle of these systems, from pretraining data curation and model development to production serving, evaluation, and monitoring, enabling reliable and impactful AI‑driven experiences at scale. Position Overview As a Senior Research Scientist, you will lead applied research efforts for Plaid’s foundation model, designing model architectures, pretraining objectives, and fine‑tuning strategies that generalize across a wide range of downstream product use cases. You will build and maintain production‑grade ML systems end‑to‑end, including training pipelines, model serving infrastructure, feature engineering workflows, and monitoring systems. You will develop robust evaluation frameworks that measure model quality across diverse tasks and real‑world applications, rather than optimizing for a single benchmark metric. In close partnership with product and engineering teams across Plaid, you will adapt foundation models to specific business needs and validate their impact through rigorous experimentation. You will also communicate and publish research findings internally and externally, helping advance the state of machine learning and AI across the organization. Responsibilities Building a foundation model on one of the world’s richest financial datasets that no one else has. Doing research that ships: moving from experimentation and prototypes to production systems serving real customers. Working across the full ML stack, from pretraining objectives and architectures to serving infrastructure and monitoring. Collaborating with a high‑caliber team and seeing your work amplify the capabilities of multiple product teams. Helping hundreds of millions of consumers achieve greater financial freedom through data‑driven products. Requirements MS or PhD in ML/AI/CS/Stats/Applied Math (or closely related). PhD preferred but not required — candidates with equivalent industry research and production experience will be considered. 3–7 years of industry experience building and deploying ML models, with evidence of both research depth and production delivery. Strong applied ML research skills with production delivery experience Depth in Transformers/LLMs, representation learning, or large‑scale model training Demonstrated ability to ship models to production (not just prototype) Distributed training experience and strong Python + software engineering fundamentals Fintech / financial data domain experience – Nice to have External publications or open‑source contributions – Nice to have Compensation and Benefits 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. Equal Opportunity Employer 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