Zachary Perret, co-founder and CEO of fintech company Plaid. (LinkedIn Photo)
Plaid is opening an engineering office in Seattle’s Westlake neighborhood in January and plans to double its local workforce to about 80 people by next summer.
The San Francisco-based fintech company says the new 11,466-square-foot space will serve as a hub for its technical teams, with most open Seattle roles focused on machine learning, data science and engineering.
Plaid said in a blog post that it chose Seattle because much of the cloud and AI technology behind modern financial infrastructure was built in the region. The company is developing AI models trained on its network to understand patterns in how money moves.
Plaid already has about 40 employees in the Seattle area, who currently work remotely, The Seattle Times reported. “There’s just great talent in Seattle, so it’s a little bit of a no-brainer for us,” Meghan Welch, Plaid’s chief people officer, told the Times.
Plaid’s careers page lists more than 50 open roles that include Seattle as a possible location, though most are also open in San Francisco, New York or other cities. About half are in data, engineering or security, with the rest spread across sales, legal, finance and other teams.
Founded in 2013, Plaid was valued at $8 billion in an employee share sale earlier this year, down from a 2021 peak of $13.4 billion. The company says more than 150 million people have used its technology to connect their financial accounts.
Plaid is led by co-founder and CEO Zachary Perret .
The new office will have views of Lake Union, an outdoor deck and event space, along with three catered meals a day, according to the company.
