Financial technology
10 Plaid engineering leaders
These ten engineering leaders have run teams at Plaid as its CTO, heads of engineering and directors of engineering. A reader can learn how Plaid organizes engineering for areas such as payments, bank connectivity, platform and data, and how those teams are led.
Professionals to explore
01—10Alex Perelygin
LinkedInExperience: Head of Engineering, Payments · Plaid
Head of Engineering, Payments at Plaid since March 2020, a role the profile describes as leading engineering across the Payments organization, spanning product, infrastructure and ML. Prior roles include Engineering Manager at Airbnb (2019–2020) and Engineering Manager at Facebook (2017–2019).
Henish Shah
LinkedInExperience: Director of Engineering · Plaid
Director of Engineering at Plaid since December 2021, a role the profile describes as leading 60 full-stack engineers across eight teams who own Plaid's 12K bank integrations and Open Finance products. Prior roles include Engineering Manager at Meta (2017–2021) and Software Engineer at Meta (2013–2017).
Jipeng Han
LinkedInExperience: Head of Platform Engineering · Plaid
Head of Platform Engineering at Plaid since January 2024, leading the Platform Engineering teams and supporting Plaid Engineering as an Eng Staff member, per the profile. Earlier roles include Engineering Lead, Product & Data Platform at Plaid (2021–2024) and Head of Engineering, Payments Risk and Modeling at Airbnb (2020–2021).
John Backus
LinkedInExperience: CTO of Cognito · Plaid
CTO of Cognito at Plaid since January 2022, a role the profile lists in Plaid's engineering department at C-level, and the profile headline reads Fraud Engineering Lead at Plaid. The profile also shows a Co-Founder, CTO row at Cognito from 2013, and an earlier role as Technical Lead at Bloom Protocol (2017–2018).
Kanak Chavda
LinkedInExperience: Head of Data Engineering · Plaid
Head of Data Engineering at Plaid since April 2025, a role the profile lists in Plaid's engineering department at head level. Prior roles include Director, Data Engineering at Lacework (2023–2024), Manager, Data Engineering Principal Data Engineer at Lacework (2022–2023) and Senior Principal Data Engineer at Netflix (2015–2021).
Kira Booth
LinkedInExperience: Director of Engineering · Plaid
Former Director of Engineering at Plaid (2020–2022), after serving there as Senior Engineering Manager (2019–2020) and Engineering Manager Site Lead (2018–2019). Later roles include Engineering Lead at Cash App (2022–2025) and Director of Engineering at Cherry since December 2025.
Lou Kosak
LinkedInExperience: Head of Engineering, Connectivity · Plaid
Former Head of Engineering, Connectivity at Plaid (2023–2024), with later Plaid roles as Head of Network Enablement and Access (2024) and Head of Product Engineering since November 2024. Lou Kosak was also an Engineering Lead at Plaid (2019–2023) and an Engineering Manager at Airbnb (2015–2018).
Smiral Shah
LinkedInExperience: Director of Engineering · Plaid
Director of Engineering at Plaid since May 2026, a role the profile lists in the engineering department at director level. The profile also shows a Senior Engineering Manager row at Superhuman from 2024 with no end date, plus roles as Senior Engineering Manager at Databricks (2019–2024) and Senior Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft (2017–2019).
Will Robinson
LinkedInExperience: Chief Technology Officer · Plaid
Chief Technology Officer at Plaid since May 2025, responsible for Plaid's technical teams, which the profile lists as Engineering, Data Science, Security, DevOps and Technical Program Management. Prior roles include VP of Engineering at Coinbase (2021–2025), Chief Technology Officer at ASAPP (2019–2021) and Chief Technology Officer at Google Cloud Security (2016–2019).
Zander Hill
LinkedInExperience: Manager of Managers (Director) · Plaid
Former Manager of Managers (Director) at Plaid (2022–2023). Zander Hill's other Plaid roles include Engineering Manager (2021–2022), Technical Lead Manager (2023–2024), Experienced Database Reliability Engineer (2024–2025) and Architecture Lead for Platform since February 2025, described as software architecture lead for the Platform org.
Choose the right perspective
Match the person's area to your question, since payments, connectivity, platform, data and fraud engineering each face different technical problems. Pick a current leader for how Plaid works today, or a former one for a comparison with other companies.
Questions to take into the conversation
- 01How does Plaid keep thousands of bank integrations reliable as institutions change their systems?
- 02How are Plaid's engineering teams split between product, platform and data work, and how do they coordinate?
- 03What engineering practices matter most when building financial APIs that other companies depend on?
Reaching Plaid engineering leaders
How can I contact one of these Plaid engineering leaders?
Pick one of the 10 people on this page and choose "Book a paid call", or describe your project to find others. You offer a fee for a 15-minute call or a written answer, Instant Expert finds the person's work email and sends the invitation, and they decide whether to accept. The list covers 1 company: Plaid, based on profile data retrieved on October 3, 2026. Being listed here doesn't mean someone has agreed to take calls.
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About this directory
This is a professional research starting point based on business profile data retrieved on . Titles and companies reflect that source snapshot and may describe past or present roles. Check the linked profiles for current details. Inclusion does not imply Instant Expert membership or availability.
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