Product Security Engineer, Application Security
Imagine a world where financial interactions are seamless, secure, and empower millions. At Plaid, we're not just imagining it – we're building the infrastructure that makes it a reality. Plaid powers the tools that help millions live healthier financial lives, working with thousands of companies from Venmo and SoFi to Fortune 500s and major banks. Our network connects to 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK, and Europe, transforming how people connect their financial accounts to the apps and services they rely on.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, Plaid has offices in New York, Seattle, Washington D.C., Raleigh, London, and Amsterdam.
The Mission of Product Security
Our Product Security Team is dedicated to "improving our customer’s trust by assuring secure development and delivery of products and services, minimizing risk to the ecosystem, and preventing security incidents."
We empower engineering teams to build secure products from the ground up and continuously identify and reduce security risks. Our work is expansive, covering security architecture and design, application security, vulnerability management, supply chain security, and security automation.
We collaborate directly with product and engineering teams, identifying risks early, influencing secure architecture, and defining robust security requirements. We build and leverage automated security capabilities to expand testing coverage, validate fixes, and prevent recurring vulnerabilities. As AI rapidly accelerates software development, our goal is to help Plaid maintain strong security without relying on manual reviews for every change, pushing the boundaries of automated and intelligent security.
Who You Are
You are a deeply technical security professional passionate about building secure systems. This role is perfect for you if: You thrive on understanding complex products and distributed systems, uncovering non-obvious security risks with a keen eye for detail. What You'll Do As a Product Security Engineer, you will be instrumental in safeguarding Plaid's innovative financial ecosystem: Lead security architecture and design reviews for high-priority Plaid products, collaborating directly with engineering and product teams from early development through launch. What You'll Bring (Must Haves) 5+ years of dedicated experience in product or application security, demonstrating strong expertise in secure architecture, application security fundamentals, and technical risk assessment. Bonus Points (Nice to Haves) Experience securing AI-powered applications or agentic systems. Why Plaid? Our mission at Plaid is to unlock financial freedom for everyone. To support that mission, we seek to build a diverse team of driven individuals who care deeply about making the financial ecosystem more equitable. We recognize that strong qualifications can come from both prior work experiences and lived experiences. We encourage you to apply to a role even if your experience doesn't fully match the job description. We are always looking for team members that will bring something unique to Plaid! 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 [email protected]. Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here. 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.
You possess strong application security fundamentals and are comfortable diving directly into code and architectural designs.
You enjoy embedding with engineering and product teams, solving security problems proactively at the earliest stages of development.
You excel at evaluating technical and business tradeoffs, influencing critical architectural decisions that shape the future of our products.
You are excited by the transformative potential of AI in software development and eager to innovate how we approach product security in this new era.
Conduct rigorous threat modeling and technical security assessments of complex applications, APIs, distributed systems, and product workflows to identify material security risks.
Evaluate authentication, authorization, trust boundaries, sensitive data flows, and business logic to uncover potential vulnerabilities and abuse cases.
Review application code, investigate security weaknesses, and meticulously validate that proposed fixes comprehensively address underlying risks.
Assess the security implications of new technologies and product capabilities, including cutting-edge AI-powered applications and agentic workflows.
Partner with engineering leadership to prioritize material security risks, agree on effective mitigations, and track their remediation or approved risk acceptance.
Identify recurring security weaknesses, define reusable security requirements and secure design patterns, and collaborate with engineering teams to implement preventive controls.
Leverage AI-assisted security analysis and testing to continuously improve security assessments and validate important security assumptions, pushing the frontier of automated security.
Proven experience leading security design reviews and threat modeling for complex applications, APIs, or distributed systems.
Deep understanding of authentication, authorization, trust boundaries, sensitive data protection, and common application security vulnerabilities (e.g., OWASP Top 10).
Strong software engineering fundamentals, including the ability to read and understand application code, analyze vulnerability paths, and evaluate the efficacy of security fixes.
Experience assessing security risks in cloud-native applications and a solid understanding of the security implications of system architecture and implementation decisions.
Ability to clearly and concisely communicate complex security risks, recommend practical and effective mitigations, and influence engineering and product leadership.
Ability to operate independently in ambiguous environments and collaborate effectively across diverse teams.
Experience with penetration testing, vulnerability research, or security testing of complex business logic.
Experience securing financial technology products or systems handling sensitive or regulated data.