Staff Backend Engineer – Data & AI Platforms

Altruist; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Office in SF

401k with 4% match

16 weeks parental leave

L&D budget

Mobility program

Work from anywhere

Job summary

Altruist is seeking an AI-native Staff Software Engineer who combines creative thinking with business acumen to shape the technical direction of our data and AI platforms and stay hands-on in building systems that help financial advisors deliver exceptional client service.

As a senior individual contributor, you’ll lead complex initiatives, turn ambiguous business needs into practical technical plans, and own outcomes from design through production, balancing delivery speed with reliability,

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with complex platform or distributed systems.
• Strong Python or Java and SQL skills, plus data platform experience.
• Experience with cloud services, AWS, and Kubernetes in production.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for scalable data pipelines and data serving platforms.
• Design and build high-performance systems for data ingestion, transformation, and serving.
• Create shared AI frameworks and data access platforms for trusted data.
• Lead multi-team initiatives and guide design through rollout and operation.
• Improve data quality, observability, and security in collaboration with security.

Skills

Python

Java

SQL

Data modeling

Cloud AWS

Kubernetes

Spark

AI fluency

Technical leadership

Communication

Problem solving

Education

B.S. in Computer Science

Tools

Snowflake

Airflow

dbt

Cursor

Claude Code

Job description

Altruist is seeking an AI-native Staff Software Engineer who combines creative thinking with business acumen to shape the technical direction of our data and AI platforms and stay hands-on in building systems that help financial advisors deliver exceptional client service.

As a senior individual contributor, you’ll lead complex initiatives, turn ambiguous business needs into practical technical plans, and own outcomes from design through production, balancing delivery speed with reliability,