Principal Software Engineer – Platform Engineering

AlphaSense; United States; Remote; USD 246,000 - 339,000; Full time

Job summary

AlphaSense, a leading AI platform for market intelligence, seeks a senior staff engineer to own the architectural direction for scaling hundreds of services across regions and deployment models. You'll drive re-architecture efforts and set patterns for product services while shaping a flexible, cloud-native environment.

You will work with Java, Python, and other stacks, embedding AI tooling and collaborating with SRE, Cloud Platform, and DevEx to raise the architecture bar across the

Qualifications

• Hands-on architecture experience in large microservice estates (hundreds).
• Strong in Java and Python; willingness to contribute to other stacks.
• Proven ability to decompose large service estates into evolvable sub-systems.
• Experience designing for horizontal scalability across regions and deployments.
• Cloud-native background with Kubernetes, containers and AWS.

Responsibilities

• Set architectural direction for horizontal scaling across regions, cells and deployment models.
• Own environments configuration management framework end-to-end.
• Decompose hundreds of microservices into sub-systems with independent lifecycles.
• Design and land changes directly in product services in collaboration with teams.
• Embed AI tooling into day-to-day development and mentor staff engineers.

Skills

Java

Python

Cloud-native

Kubernetes

AWS

System architecture

Tools

Git

Docker

CI/CD tooling

Job description

About AlphaSense:

AlphaSense is the AI platform redefining market intelligence and workflow orchestration, trusted by thousands of leading organizations to drive faster, more confident decisions in business and finance. The platform combines domain-specific AI with a vast content universe of over 500 million premium business documents - including equity research, earnings calls, expert interviews, filings, news, and internal proprietary content. Purpose-built for speed, accuracy, and enterprise-grade security, AlphaSense helps teams extract critical insights, uncover market-moving trends, and automate complex workflows with high-quality outputs. With AI solutions like Generative Search, Generative Grid, and Deep Research, AlphaSense delivers the clarity and depth professionals need to navigate complexity and obtain accurate, real-time information quickly. For more information, visit www.alpha-sense.com. Come join us.

About The Role:

AlphaSense runs a large-scale, Kubernetes-native platform built on a modern microservices architecture, serving the majority of the Fortune 500. We're now moving it into a cell-based architecture, where each cell is an independent deployment of the platform, and the cell count is heading from dozens toward hundreds, including private and isolated clouds.

Platform tooling only takes that so far. The rest of the problem is architectural and it sits in the services: how they're structured, how they're bounded, and what they assume about the environment they run in. This role owns that side of the work.

You'll set the architectural direction for how our services scale horizontally across regions, cells and deployment models, and you'll build it rather than specify it. You'll own the environments configuration management framework to operate environments as a fleet, and the services and libraries to make it work. Where the answer is a re-architecture rather than a patch, you design it and you write it. Much of it lands in code other teams own, so influence matters as much as design.

The scope is deliberately broad: hundreds of services, several languages, and the latitude to go after whichever scalability limit matters most. Our main languages are Java, Python, React and Rust.

We use AI tooling heavily and expect the same from you, along with a view on how the rest of engineering should be using it.

What You'll Do:

• Drive the service-side changes cell architecture needs: re-architecture, shared library, etc.
• Decompose hundreds of microservices into sub-systems with independent lifecycles
• Find and close horizontal scalability gaps across regions, cells and deployment models
• Own the environments application configuration management framework end-to-end
• Own the services and libraries specific to private and isolated cloud deployments
• Design and land changes directly in product services, partnering with the teams that own them
• Set the architecture patterns and reference implementations product teams build against
• Make configuration a runtime concern rather than something baked into service code
• Partner with Cloud Platform, SRE and DevEx on where the service and platform boundary should sit
• Raise the architectural bar across the org and mentor Staff and Senior engineers
• Embed AI tooling into day-to-day development for lasting productivity gains

Who You Are:

• Deep hands-on architecture experience in large microservice estates, at least in hundreds
• Strong in Java and Python, and willing to contribute to other tech stacks if needed
• Track record decomposing large service estates into sub-systems that can evolve independently
• Proven experience designing for horizontal scalability across regions and independent deployments
• Experience with cell-based, multi-tenant or multi-region architectures
• Strong cloud-native background: Kubernetes, containers and AWS
• Experience externalising configuration and removing environment coupling from application code
• Demonstrated ability to land significant changes in code owned by other teams
• A record of spotting architectural limits before they turn into incidents
• Ability and desire to design, lead, influence and deliver on ambitious technical roadmaps

Nice to have:

• Experience with Vespa
• Experience with private, isolated, on-premise or air-gapped deployments
• Design and stewardship of shared libraries or internal frameworks used by many teams

For base compensation, we set standard ranges for all roles based on function and level benchmarked against similar stage growth companies and internal comparables. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience/expertise and may vary from the amounts listed below.

Base Compensation Range$246,000-$339,000 USD

AlphaSense is an equal-opportunity employer. We are committed to a work environment that supports, inspires, and respects all individuals. All employees share in the responsibility for fulfilling AlphaSense's commitment to equal employment opportunity. AlphaSense does not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of race, color, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, military or veteran status, disability, or any other non-merit factor. This policy applies to every aspect of employment at AlphaSense, including recruitment, hiring, training, advancement, and termination.

In addition, it is the policy of AlphaSense to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified employees who have protected disabilities to the extent required by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances where a particular employee works.