Senior Data Platform Engineer

Alpaca; New York (NY); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Benefits

New Hire Home-Office Setup: USD $500

Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month

Job summary

Alpaca, a US-headquartered brokerage infrastructure leader, is hiring a Senior Data Platform Engineer for our fully distributed team. You will design and operate data pipelines, lakehouse storage, and streaming infra at scale, collaborating with AI and data science to enable agentic workflows and ML lifecycle tooling.

You will own platform reliability, governance, and real-time analytics, contributing across multiple initiatives in a remote, globally distributed environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in data infrastructure or platform engineering with end-to-end ownership.
• Strong Python and SQL skills for building reliable pipelines.
• Experience with distributed data systems and streaming platforms.
• Cloud infra experience using Kubernetes and IaC.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate core data platform infrastructure and pipelines.
• Develop real-time processing and analytics for operational use cases.
• Collaborate with AI/Data Science for agentic workflows and ML tooling.
• Improve data governance, catalog, and access controls.
• Maintain platform reliability with observability and on-call participation.

Skills

Python

SQL

Data pipelines

Distributed data systems

Kubernetes

Cloud infrastructure

Observability

Tools

Trino/Presto/Spark

Apache Iceberg

Kafka/Redpanda

ML tooling (MLflow/Vertex AI)

Job description

Who We Are:

Alpaca is a US-headquartered, global leader in agent-first brokerage infrastructure for stocks, ETFs, options, crypto, fixed income, 24/5 trading, and more. Amongst our subsidiaries, Alpaca is a licensed financial services company, serving hundreds of financial institutions across 40 countries with our institutional-grade APIs. This includes broker-dealers, investment advisors, wealth managers, hedge funds, and crypto exchanges, totalling over 10 million brokerage accounts. Our global team is a diverse group of experienced engineers, traders, and brokerage professionals who are working to achieve our mission of opening financial services to everyone on the planet. We're deeply committed to open-source contributions and fostering a vibrant community, continuously enhancing our award-winning, developer-friendly API and the robust infrastructure behind it.

Alpaca is proudly backed by $400 million in funding from top-tier global investors including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Tribe Capital, Social Leverage, Horizons Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, SBI Group, Derayah Financial, Unbound, Peak XV, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Our Team Members:

We're a dynamic team of 400+ globally distributed members who thrive working from our favorite places around the world, with teammates spanning the USA, Canada, Japan, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, the UK, and beyond! We're searching for passionate individuals eager to contribute to Alpaca's rapid growth. If you align with our core values—Stay Curious, Have Empathy, and Be Accountable—and are ready to make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.

About the team & role

The Data Platform team builds and operates the shared infrastructure that powers how data is stored, moved, and consumed across Alpaca. Our platform supports financial transactions, customer data, API and system events, enriched datasets, and third-party sources that power critical decisions and products for internal teams and external stakeholders. We process hundreds of millions of events each day and that scale continues to grow as Alpaca serves more customers and launches new products.

As a Senior Data Platform Engineer, you'll design, build, and operate reliable systems across Alpaca's data platform, from distributed query engines and lakehouse storage to streaming infrastructure, governance, and data serving. You'll also work closely with our AI and Data Science teams to enable agentic workflows and machine learning capabilities. As part of a small team, you'll contribute across multiple initiatives, own projects from design through production, and help shape the future of our platform.

Our team is 100% distributed and remote.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and operate core data platform infrastructure, including distributed query engines, lakehouse storage, orchestration, and streaming pipelines.
• Contribute to regional platform deployments, building scalable and repeatable infrastructure using Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code
• Develop real-time data processing, analytics, and alerting capabilities for operational and product use cases.
• Partner with AI and Data Science teams on the platform foundations for agentic workflows, evaluations, and ML lifecycle tooling.
• Evolve our data catalog, governance, and access controls so data is discoverable and properly governed.
• Own platform reliability through observability, on-call participation, and operational improvements while collaborating with cross-functional teams.

Must-haves

• 5+ years of experience in data infrastructure, platform engineering, or software engineering, with demonstrated end-to-end ownership of production systems.
• Strong Python and SQL skills, with experience building reliable pipelines, services, or platform tooling.
• Experience building or operating distributed data systems, such as query engines, lakehouses, or streaming platforms.
• Experience operating cloud infrastructure using Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, and deployment automation.
• Sound operational judgment, clear technical communication, and the ability to collaborate across engineering teams.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience with distributed query engines such as Trino, Presto, or Spark, and open table formats such as Apache Iceberg.
• Experience with streaming and real-time data infrastructure such as Kafka, Redpanda, Flink, or Debezium.
• Experience with AI and agent infrastructure, including MCP servers, retrieval systems, agent observability, or LLM evaluation.
• Experience supporting ML infrastructure using technologies such as MLflow, Vertex AI, or similar platforms.
• Experience with real-time analytics engines such as ClickHouse, Pinot, or Druid.
• Experience designing and operating infrastructure across multiple cloud regions, including workload isolation and cost-performance trade-offs.

How We Take Care of You:

• Competitive Salary & Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• New Hire Home-Office Setup: One-time USD $500
• Monthly Stipend: USD $150 per month via a Brex Card

Alpaca is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.