Principal Platform Engineer

Alden Scientific; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Health benefits

Flexible PTO

Professional development

Job summary

Alden Scientific is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer in the Boston area to serve as a technical partner to the Director of Engineering. You will drive engineering excellence across application, data, ML, and platform infrastructure, shaping the technical direction of the entire organization.

This hands-on leadership role emphasizes architecture, platform engineering, and long-term health of the engineering platform.

Qualifications

• : 8+ years of software engineering experience building production systems.
• : Strong Python and software engineering fundamentals.
• : Experience with large-scale, data-intensive applications.
• : Deep understanding of distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native architecture, and modern software design.
• : Proficient in AWS and cloud-native development.
• : Experience with relational, document, and graph databases.
• : Designing modern data platforms with layered architectures.
• : Familiar with CI/CD, testing strategies, and engineering best practices.
• : Systems-thinking mindset with scalable solutions.
• : Excellent communication and influencing technical direction.

Responsibilities

• Shape long-term technical direction with engineering leadership.
• Provide technical leadership across application, data, ML, and platform services.
• Evaluate decisions for scalability, reliability, and security.
• Identify cross-team opportunities to simplify systems.
• Raise software quality through reviews and standards.
• Drive AI-assisted software development and modern practices.
• Improve observability and operational health metrics.
• Lead architecture and design reviews for major initiatives.
• Develop reference architectures for scalable platforms.

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

AWS

CI/CD

Data engineering

Platform engineering

Microservices

Architectural design

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Spark

Airflow

dbt

Job description

About Us

Alden Scientific is transforming health and longevity by prioritizing individuals, not averages. Our platform harnesses multi-omic data and AI to provide predictive, personalized health management — making proactive health management the new normal.

The Role

We're looking for a Principal Platform Engineer to serve as the technical partner to our Director of Engineering, driving engineering excellence across application engineering, data engineering, machine learning engineering, and platform infrastructure.

This role is built for a systems thinker — someone who naturally looks past individual components to see how software, data, infrastructure, and engineering practices fit together as one cohesive platform. Rather than owning a single application or technology, you'll help shape the technical direction of the entire engineering organization, improving scalability, reliability, maintainability, and developer productivity.

This is a hands‑on technical leadership role combining architecture, software engineering, platform engineering, and engineering excellence. Operational DevOps support is a secondary responsibility; the primary focus is the long‑term health and evolution of our engineering platform.

What You'll Do

Partner with engineering leadership

• Work with the Director of Engineering to shape the long-term technical direction of the engineering organization.
• Provide technical leadership across application, data, and ML engineering and platform services.
• Evaluate decisions through the lens of scalability, maintainability, reliability, security, and operational simplicity.
• Identify cross-team opportunities to simplify systems and improve engineering effectiveness.
• Raise the bar for software quality through code reviews, engineering standards, and technical mentorship.
• Standardize QA/QC practices and establish consistent engineering quality across teams.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted software development and modern engineering practices.
• Improve engineering visibility through metrics, dashboards, and operational health indicators.
• Lead architecture and design reviews for major technical initiatives.
• Establish evaluation frameworks for agentic systems to measure reasoning latency, tool‑use reliability, and hallucination rates.

Build scalable platforms

• Design systems capable of supporting future growth, and identify bottlenecks before they become production issues.
• Improve observability, reliability, resiliency, and capacity planning.
• Develop reference architectures and reusable platform patterns that accelerate engineering teams.
• Design platforms capable of orchestrating complex agentic workflows and managing non‑deterministic reasoning loops.

Support platform operations

• Provide technical guidance on cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and platform automation.
• Assist with operational issues when needed and automate repetitive work.
• Evolve internal platform capabilities that help engineering teams move faster.
• Develop secure tool‑use infrastructure and governance frameworks for agentic systems.

What You Bring

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building production systems.
• Expert‑level Python and a strong software engineering foundation.
• Experience building and operating large‑scale, data‑intensive applications.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, APIs, cloud‑native architecture, and modern software design.
• Strong understanding of AWS and cloud‑native application development.
• Experience with relational, document, and graph databases — and knowing when each is appropriate.
• Experience designing modern data platforms, including medallion or comparable layered data architectures.
• Experience with software quality, testing strategies, CI/CD, and engineering best practices.
• A systems‑thinking mindset and the ability to understand complex systems quickly and find scalable, pragmatic solutions.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence technical direction without direct authority.

Preferences

• Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar).
• Spark, Airflow, dbt, or other modern data engineering ecosystems.
• Mentoring senior engineers and leading architecture across multiple teams.
• Agentic frameworks (e.g., LangChain, CrewAI) and building evaluation harnesses for LLM/agentic applications.

Why Join Us

• Impact: Your work will directly support the multi‑omic science and AI models that empower individuals to take control of their health.
• Growth: A clear trajectory toward Staff Engineer or Engineering Lead roles.
• Innovation: Expand the frontier of data‑driven, AI‑informed health management.
• Collaboration: Work alongside scientists, engineers, and product teams redefining health management.
• Benefits: Competitive salary, equity options, health benefits, flexible PTO, and professional development support.

Hybrid role based in Cambridge, MA; occasional travel may be required.