Summer 2024 Plinterns: A Look Back

As summer comes to a close, we said goodbye to our exceptional New Business and Engineering interns, or “Plinterns,” as they’re affectionately known throughout our offices. Before returning to school, our San Francisco and New York City-based Plinterns shared their experiences and learnings from this summer. 

The SF Plintern team from top left to bottom right: Sasha Singh, Sophia Cooper, Matthew Moyer, Arushi Gupta, Alex Zakoor, Emily Wang, Alicia Chen, Saya Kim-Suzuki, Nitin Paul 

Not pictured: Cham Yao, Shari Sun 

The NYC Plintern team left to right: Roland Saavedra, Aarav Patel, Alan Yu, Riley Rabuchin, Anya Hasija, Julianna Caballero, Michelle Feng, Jiwon Lee 

Arushi Gupta
Engineering, ML
Carnegie Mellon University, Master 2025

What projects did you work on this summer? 

Gupta: This summer, as a Machine Learning Intern, I worked on an AI Agent for code generation. Plaid integrates with different financial institutions, and currently, the code is written manually by the engineering team, which can be a time-consuming process. I worked on an AI agent, which can write this code for an unseen institution so that any new financial institution can be onboarded significantly faster. 

What made your project particularly challenging or interesting? 

Gupta: This project was very interesting because AI agents have shown limited performance in the real world, and there are a lot of complexities that need to be taken into account. So creating an agent for a very specific use case with humans in the loop and high precision was challenging. 

What new skills did you learn this summer? 

Gupta: This summer, I learned a lot about LLM Agents, which I will be studying in my upcoming semester. Most importantly, I learned how to leverage the most up-to-date research and convert it into practical solutions that can be productionized.  

What was the most memorable experience from your Plinternship? 

Gupta: My most memorable experience was my interactions with everyone at Plaid, from my fellow interns to other folks on the Machine Learning team. Everyone comes from amazing experiences, and they are incredibly talented.

Alex Zakoor
New Business
UC Irvine, 2025

What projects did you work on this summer?

Zakoor: This summer, I worked on creating and finding ways to generate pipeline for the New Business organization. This included developing messaging cadences to re-engage previously lost prospects, outbounding net-new prospects, and creating an onboarding guide for future New Business interns. I worked personally with a few senior colleagues within the New Business organization to prospect and outbound new accounts in different segments, which was a great learning opportunity. I also participated in both live and simulated discovery calls with prospects, helping fellow NBAs build pipeline.

What made your project particularly challenging or interesting? 

Zakoor: My project was interesting because I was able to immerse myself in different sectors of Plaid’s business that I had previously no experience in. Working in the enterprise sector has been a great learning experience—I’ve learned I’d like to pursue a career in sales.

What new skills did you learn this summer?

Zakoor: I learned how to hold valuable and efficient conversations with a prospect while pitching Plaid’s value and building trust and rapport with the person. I also learned the ins and outs and technical details of Plaid’s product suite, as well as the deal cycle in SaaS and how that changes due to a variety of factors. 

What was your proudest accomplishment?

Zakoor: Booking a meeting with a net-new enterprise prospect. They were part of a larger real estate conglomerate and it was such an incredible experience to be responsible for pitching Plaid to them and helping to lead their introductory call.  

What was the most memorable experience from your Plinternship?

Zakoor: Making friends with the other interns and members of my team in the SF office. I was surrounded by an incredible group of people who were immensely knowledgeable about Plaid, sales as a whole, and had very sharp business acumen. On top of this, everyone at Plaid was very welcoming and friendly, and as I leave Plaid, I feel like I’ve made friends I’ll keep for a lifetime. 

Aarav Patel
Engineering
UC Berkeley, 2025

What projects did you work on this summer?

Patel: This summer, I worked on improving the rate-limiting system for Plaid Transfer. Before my project, customers had little transparency about their transfer usage in relation to their limits. My project improved the volume tracking architecture to be resilient to errors and nearly 100% accurate. In addition, my project ensured that when customers come close to hitting their limits, we send email and Slack alerts to notify our customers and our internal teams. Lastly, I also added multiple fields to Transfer APIs to allow customers to have better access to usage and limit data.

What made your project particularly challenging or interesting? 

Patel: I found that the most challenging and interesting part of my work this summer was the deep product knowledge I had to build in order to successfully execute on my work. Money movement and ACH is such a nuanced field, which in turn makes the technical solutions equally complex. This summer, I gained an immense amount of insight into the ways that open banking, ACH operations, and financial risk management manifest themselves across the US. Learning about each of these things was super fascinating, and ultimately helped me build a better product!

What new skills did you learn this summer?

Patel: This summer I learned a wide variety of technical and product skills. In particular, I gained first-hand experience in Plaid’s technical stack, including Golang, AWS, Redis, Kubernetes, and more. I also learned a great deal about microservice architecture, asynchronous work, and distributed systems. From a product perspective, I grew a breadth of knowledge about the ACH system in the US, how APIs work, the use cases for digital finance solutions, and so much more!

What was your proudest accomplishment? 

Patel: My proudest accomplishment this summer was the completion and rollout of my project. At Plaid, we have a Slack channel called #ships, where we celebrate our engineering and product accomplishments. One of the best feelings from the summer was posting about my project in this channel, and receiving support from all of Plaid! 

What was the most memorable experience from your Plinternship?

Patel: The people at Plaid are what I will truly remember from this internship experience. There were so many times this summer that I would go on walks or coffee chats with others around the beautiful streets of Soho. For every scoop of ice cream or cup of coffee, I’d have amazing conversations with so many people from all walks of life. Those are the moments that I will always remember when looking back on this summer.

Alan Yu
Engineering
University of California, Los Angeles, May 2025

What projects did you work on this summer? 

Yu: This summer, I created an offline data foundation that powers our new network insights products as well as provides on-the-fly auditing for our data partners in compliance with the upcoming 1033 open banking regulation. This encompassed architecting a solution that can read in over one billion rows of data, cleaning and joining with other tables, before writing it to a secure data lakehouse. 

What made your project particularly challenging or interesting? 

Yu: The thing that made my project particularly challenging was that I was the first person on my team to work with sensitive data. Plaid places an extremely high premium on the security of personally identifiable information. This made it more challenging to gain access to the relevant data and use it in the existing frameworks my team had access to. Furthermore, almost all the technology I worked with was new to me—from Apache Airflow to RPCs to AWS. In any other environment, these challenges would have been extremely daunting. However, of my four internships, I found my team members at Plaid to have been both the smartest and most inclined to help. This summer, I really felt like I stood on, and looked over, the shoulders of friendly giants. 

What new skills did you learn this summer? 

Yu: In terms of technical skills, as mentioned earlier, I have learned: AWS (Sagemaker, EMR, S3), Apache (Spark, Airflow, Xcoms), and Golang (the programming language). Business-wise, I have had many conversations with team members and the CEO and founder of Plaid, about the future, growth, and fintech in general. I have certainly learned more in a summer here, than a quarter at UCLA.

What was your proudest accomplishment? 

Yu: My proudest accomplishment was shipping my project (with stretch goals included) two weeks early. I was ecstatic to deliver a project with a strong impact that served as the foundation for my team’s new products. When I discussed this project with other Plaids outside my team, many made serious inquiries about using my database for their products as well.  Because of how fast I cleared my first project, I am also very pleased to have been given a second project that contributes to the top project of the company! Earning my team’s confidence to be given a project with such high visibility, tight deadlines, and strong impact in such a short time has been the highlight of my summer. 

What was the most memorable experience from your Plinternship? 

Yu: The most memorable experience I had from my Plinternship was when I got breakfast with Zach Perret, the founder and CEO of Plaid. Something I made sure to do throughout my internship was to talk to every Plaid I could, both within and outside of my team. Inevitably, this sparked my interest in broader company performance and culture topics. Going into that breakfast, I knew that I wanted some clarity. So, I asked him some very tough questions. His answers were honest, both acknowledging our challenges and the opportunity to rise up and meet them.

Right before breakfast ended, I got a selfie! Some of the other interns thought I was going to get in trouble for not softballing my questions, however, later that day I got a message saying he really enjoyed hearing those questions and wanted someone to follow up with me. His response, both the content and the way he handled my questions, reassured and inspired me. 

Anya Hasija
New Business
Duke University, May 2025

What projects did you work on this summer? 

Hasija: This summer as a new business intern I worked on a number of different projects surrounding how Plaid drives new business and new clients. One of my projects was to analyze inbound leads from the past 90 days, synthesize the information, and then to use the key trends I noticed to formulate recommendations for future outbounding strategy. I also got trained in product knowledge and discovery calls to go live with clients. Throughout the second half of my internship, I reached out to startup companies and got on calls to discuss their challenges and how Plaid could positively impact their development. 

What made your project particularly challenging or interesting? 

Hasija: What I found most interesting about my time at Plaid this summer was the amount of startups I got to personally talk to. I got to hear about all of the newest ideas and innovations across many industries, as well as speak to executive-level individuals and founders. 

What new skills did you learn this summer? 

Hasija: I think the most important skills I developed at Plaid this summer were my client-facing skills. I learned how to reach out to businesses at all different points of their development is very important and how to be a clear and concise communicator. 

What was the most memorable experience from your Plinternship? 

Hasija: I really loved all of the people I got to work with and meet during my Plinternship. The new business team is really well connected across coasts, so I felt like I could build strong connections at both the NY and SF offices. My coffee chats walking around Soho have been very fun, as well as going on walks to Elizabeth St. Garden with the other interns. 

Riley Rabuchin
New Business
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, June 2025

What projects did you work on this summer? 

Rabuchin: This summer involved a wide range of projects that gave me the opportunity to become more confident in my selling skills and make a direct impact on the sales team by driving new business. Highlights included mock calls, which were a great way to refine my Plaid product and industry knowledge. Reaching out to leads taught me how to craft customer messaging and gain more experience with Salesforce and SalesLoft. Additionally, I prospected net new accounts, which generated new pipeline, and published weekly newsletters to keep the team up to date on current events.

What made your project particularly challenging or interesting? 

Rabuchin: The most challenging and interesting aspect of my projects was building the product knowledge necessary to successfully complete my tasks. Plaid offers a wide range of products across various verticals, so there’s always something new to learn. Coming in, I had no background in fintech, but I’ve enjoyed pushing myself to learn a new nugget of information every day!

What new skills did you learn this summer? 

Rabuchin: This summer, I had the opportunity to hone my client-facing skills. Plaid provides the perfect learning environment, with everyone there to support you. I was able to apply what I learned through firsthand experience. I now feel much more confident in my selling abilities than I did at the beginning of the summer. I know what questions to ask, how to create value, run a successful call, and write and deliver effective customer messaging.

What was your proudest accomplishment? 

Rabuchin: My proudest accomplishment was generating new pipeline for the sales team. I conducted independent research to identify prospects that would be a great fit for Plaid. From there, my team and I reached out to them, and several of my leads resulted in AE meetings. It was incredibly rewarding to make a direct impact at Plaid!

What was the most memorable experience from your Plinternship?  

Rabuchin: My most memorable experience was taking a pasta-making class with the New Business team after work! Not only was the pasta amazing, the company was even better. Plaid is made up of some of the smartest, yet most down-to-earth people, and whenever we’re all together, it’s always a great time! 

Julianna Caballero
New Business
St Lawrence University, May 2025

What projects did you work on this summer? 

Caballero: During my time at Plaid, I was able to work on various projects including a weekly newsletter, analyzing inbound trends, and gaining product knowledge as a part of the New Business team. Throughout the entirety of the internship I did mock calls, simulating discovery calls with customers. After the practice calls, I was able to reach out to prospects and lead discovery calls with prospects with the purpose of understanding how Plaid would be a good fit for their business model. 

What made your project particularly challenging or interesting? 

Caballero: What was most interesting about reaching out to prospects was the one-on-one contact I had with them. Understanding what is important to entrepreneurs and how Plaid is able to solve issues they face was very valuable. I gained an understanding of how the team operates and the impact that Plaid is making. Additionally, I got to take part in conversations that helped drive growth. 

What new skills did you learn this summer? 

Caballero: The skill that I feel I was able to exercise and develop the most was communication. Being a strong communicator was essential for my internship. Being able to reach out and ask questions to prospects in a way that is productive and drives conversation in the right direction was extremely important on calls. Working on such a close-knit team calls for being a good communicator. 

What was the most memorable experience from your Plinternship?  

Caballero: The most memorable experience from my time at Plaid was definitely getting to build relationships with the people at Plaid. I got to spend a lot of time meeting new people and getting insight into what their day-to-day looks like. Everyone was so welcoming and always happy to answer a question or just chat. Spending as much time as I did with my fellow interns and with my mentor is something that shaped my experience in a positive way. 

At Plaid, we look forward to the summer because it means we get to welcome a new Plintern class. Our goal is to create a memorable experience that offers professional growth and opportunities to Deliver Impact where interns can create lasting connections as part of our Championship Team. We’d like to extend our sincere thanks to this year's incredible Plintern class for all their hard work and the energy they brought to our offices! 

Interested in becoming a Plintern or joining the Plaid team full-time? Check out our open positions, and learn more about how we’re unlocking financial freedom for everyone by visiting our Careers page.