Experienced Infrastructure Engineer

As an Experienced Infrastructure Engineer at Plaid, your primary responsibility will be to build and scale the core infrastructure that supports our production engineering and developer operations. This includes providing automated solutions that allow your team to focus on innovative problem-solving at scale, while also managing production environments and databases effectively. You'll work closely with product teams to ship new features and ensure that our systems run smoothly, impacting millions of users daily.

To excel as an Experienced Infrastructure Engineer at Plaid, candidates should have a strong background in infrastructure engineering or devops. Familiarity with programming languages such as Bash, Go, or Python is essential, along with hands-on experience managing production environments. Knowledge of tools like Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker, and Jenkins will set you apart. A strong ability to balance day-to-day tasks with long-term projects is also crucial in this role.

At Plaid, we understand the importance of work-life balance, especially for an Experienced Infrastructure Engineer who may juggle high-stakes projects alongside daily operations. To promote this balance, we prioritize top-notch meeting practices and embrace asynchronous communication, allowing engineers to manage their time effectively and focus on their best work. We aim to create an environment without the distractions of unnecessary notifications, supporting our team in achieving their full potential.

An Experienced Infrastructure Engineer at Plaid can look forward to working on impactful projects that shape the financial ecosystem. You’ll be involved in designing scalable infrastructure solutions, managing automated deployment processes, and enhancing the performance of core orchestration platforms. Your work will enable the launch of new products, features, and enhancements that serve millions of users in connecting to their financial accounts seamlessly.

Plaid values its team members and provides a comprehensive benefits package for the Experienced Infrastructure Engineer role. This includes medical, dental, and vision coverage, as well as a 401(k) plan. Additional compensation in the form of equity and commission may also apply, based on your role and experience. These benefits are designed to support your overall well-being, ensuring you thrive both personally and professionally.

When answering this question, emphasize specific scenarios where you've successfully deployed applications using Kubernetes, detailing your approach to orchestration, scaling, and management of production workloads. Highlight any troubleshooting experiences and how you leveraged Kubernetes features to enhance performance and reliability.

To effectively prioritize tasks, discuss your method for assessing project urgency and impact. You might describe how you use tools to track progress or how you communicate with your team to align on objectives. Mention examples from your past experiences, illustrating how you successfully balanced immediate demands while ensuring long-term goals are also met.

Share a specific automated solution you developed, explaining how it addressed a particular challenge within your team. Discuss the tools you utilized and the resulting improvement in workflow or efficiency. Use data or feedback to demonstrate the impact of your solution if available, showcasing your contribution to the team's success.

When responding, delve into the specific scripts you've written using Bash, Go, or Python, focusing on how these scripts helped with automation or infrastructure management tasks. Provide examples that highlight your problem-solving skills and how your scripts contributed to system effectiveness or project outcomes.

Discuss your understanding of security protocols and how you implement them in infrastructure projects. Explain your process for conducting audits and assessments, as well as how you stay updated on security trends. Highlight methods you've used to educate your team on maintaining compliance and risk mitigation.

Emphasize your collaborative mindset and communication skills. Detail how you engage with product teams to understand their requirements and how you translate these into technical solutions. Describe your previous experiences working in cross-functional teams and the importance of clear, ongoing dialogue throughout the development process.

In your answer, use a specific example to illustrate how you identified inefficiencies in a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipeline and the steps you took to enhance it. Discuss the tools or frameworks you improved or integrated, focusing on the measurable outcomes such as reduced deployment times or increased reliability.

Detail your experience with various monitoring and observability tools, discussing how you have utilized them to proactively identify and resolve system issues. Provide examples that convey how monitoring led to quicker incident response times and system reliability improvements.

When answering this question, focus on your specific experiences managing databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. Talk about your roles in database design, performance tuning, maintaining data integrity, and implementing backup and recovery strategies, all while ensuring optimal performance in a production environment.

Discuss your analytical approach to evaluating new technologies. Highlight criteria you consider, such as scalability, compatibility, and support for existing systems. Use examples from your past experiences to illustrate how you've successfully integrated new tools or technologies and the positive impact they had on your team's workflow.