Principal Engineer, Data Platform

Overview

Principal Engineer on AlphaSense's Data Platform team, setting technical direction for the data platform and storage ecosystem behind a Kubernetes-native, cell-based architecture, and building the capabilities that let product teams run their own storage at scale.

What you'll do

• Help set the architecture and roadmap for the Data Platform and the storage ecosystem behind it
• Build the capabilities for large-scale data migrations across cells, regions, and geographies, including tooling for moving, splitting, validating, and rolling back data with minimal downtime
• Enable product teams self-service ways to provision, operate, and scale their own storage
• Drive the data-layer changes that cell-based architecture requires, including data placement, tenant routing, replication, and isolation
• Define and apply the managed-first approach: choose managed services where they fit, and build and run self-managed systems only where there is a clear reason
• Find and close scalability gaps in data stores across regions, cells and deployment models
• Build shared libraries that give product teams self-service storage capabilities
• Closely partner with Cloud Platform, SRE, and DevEx teams
• Raise the architectural bar across the organization and mentor Staff and Senior engineers
• Apply AI tooling to data platform work, such as slow query reviews and incident diagnosis

What you'll need

• Deep hands-on experience designing and operating data platforms and storage systems
• Production large-scale experience with storages (e.g. MongoDB, ClickHouse, Redis, PostgreSQL)
• Cloud-native data storage experience, including managed data services on AWS
• Strong background in Kubernetes and containers
• Track record of designing and running large-scale data migrations, including live migrations
• Experience with cell-based, multi-tenant or multi-region architectures
• Experience building platforms and tooling that other engineers use, and comfort with a model where engineers own their storage and run what they build
• Demonstrated ability to land significant changes in code owned by other teams
• A record of spotting data scalability and reliability limits before they turn into incidents
• Ability and desire to design, lead, influence, and deliver on ambitious technical roadmaps

Nice to have

• Experience running storage systems on top of Kubernetes
• Experience building control planes with Crossplane
• Experience with private, isolated, on-premises, or air-gapped deployments

Details

• Location: Remote - United States
• Base compensation range: $246,000 - $339,000 USD, plus potential performance-based bonus, equity, and benefits