Marcus Pleyer studied law in Heidelberg and Singapore as a scholarship recipient of the German National Academic Foundation. From 1995 to 1997, he completed his legal traineeship at the Higher Regional Court of Karlsruhe. From 1997 to 1998, he earned a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from the University of Edinburgh in Great Britain as a DAAD scholarship recipient. He then joined the Faculty of Law at the Technical University of Dresden, where he worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Public Law from 1998 to 2004. During this time, he also earned his doctorate in law (Dr. iur.) with a dissertation on "Federal Equality." In 2002, he received his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales in cooperation with the Open University of Hagen.
From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Marcus Pleyer worked as a consultant at the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), and in 2006 as a consultant at the Federal Ministry of Finance. Subsequently, until 2011, he worked as a consultant at the Federal Chancellery (SME policy, competition policy, economic law, financial market stabilization, G7, G20).
In 2011, he returned to the Federal Ministry of Finance and worked until 2014 as head of the ministerial office of then Federal Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. He then headed the International Financial Markets Unit until 2015. Following this, he served until 2025 as head of Sub-Department VII A (Combating Terrorist and Proliferation Financing and Money Laundering, Cyber Security, Sanctions, Digital Financial Technologies, KfW and other promotional banks, Consumer Protection, Supervision of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) within the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Since 2015, Mr. Pleyer has also undertaken various special assignments: From 2015 to 2016, he advised the Ukrainian Minister of Finance in Kyiv on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Foreign Office. From 2016 to 2025, Mr. Pleyer was a member of the Board of Directors of the Agricultural Pension Bank and, from 2017 to 2025, served as a member of the Board of Trustees, contributing to the establishment of the Nuclear Energy Disposal Fund as a federal foundation. From 2019 to 2020, he served as Vice President of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international organization for combating terrorist financing and money laundering, in Paris, and subsequently became its first President from 2020 to 2022 with an extended two-year term. From 2022 to 2025, he also led a project group on reforming the structures for combating financial crime in Germany.
Dr. Marcus Pleyer has been State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space since May 2025.