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# Staff Software Engineer - Data Governance

- **Company:** Plaid Inc.
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Java (Programming Language), Data Governance, Data Stores, Distributed Systems
- **Published:** October 1, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=e07a8a5be0633ed4

## About the Role

Must-haves:

 * Extensive experience (typically 8+ years) building and operating backend distributed systems at scale, in a language like Go, Java, or similar.
 * A track record of leading the design of complex systems and driving cross-team technical initiatives to completion.
 * Strong fundamentals in data stores, consistency, and reliability, with the judgment to reason about correctness and failure modes.
 * Demonstrated ability to turn ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and align multiple stakeholders behind them.
 * Excellent written and verbal communication, including working effectively with non-engineering partners (legal, privacy, compliance).

Nice-to-have:

 * Prior experience with data privacy, governance, or compliance systems (e.g., GDPR/CCPA deletion, data-use/consent enforcement, cataloging/classification, or auditing).

## Description

* Own the technical architecture for Plaid's data-governance platform
 * Lead the design and delivery of multi-quarter, cross-team initiatives.
 * Drive design reviews and set engineering standards for reliability, correctness, and auditability across the team's systems.
 * Partner with Legal, Privacy, Security, and product-engineering teams to shape requirements and unblock adoption of governance controls company-wide.
 * Mentor engineers and level up the team's technical judgment; act as a technical point of contact for governance concerns raised by other teams.