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AlphaSense is an AI platform that redefines market intelligence and workflow orchestration for leading organizations in business and finance. The platform combines domain-specific AI with a vast content universe of over 500 million premium business documents to help teams extract critical insights and automate complex workflows.
The Core Cloud Platform team is responsible for AlphaSense's entire cloud infrastructure, including AWS account management, networking, data storage, and Kubernetes clusters. This team supports hundreds of services used by over 400 globally distributed engineers.
As Principal Engineer, you will set the architectural roadmap for the cloud, Kubernetes, and storage platform as it scales with company growth. You'll take dedicated ownership of cloud-side configuration and the Helm chart layer that every service depends on. The role requires leading the transition to a cell-based architecture, scaling from dozens to hundreds of Kubernetes clusters. Key responsibilities include:
- Own the architectural roadmap for cloud, Kubernetes, and storage platform
- Own cloud-side configuration and Helm chart layer for Cloud Core
- Build the cell registry and automate provisioning to reduce new cell setup from weeks to days
- Design the cross-cell gate mechanism as a reusable standard checkpoint
- Own, operate, and evolve the Cloud and Kubernetes platform, including data storage layers
- Make operations (upgrades, patching, lifecycle management) routine across hundreds of clusters
- Continuously improve security, reliability, cost efficiency, and performance
- Champion standards and drive initiatives to promote uniformization
- Enable self-service and agentic workflow patterns supporting a "Build it - Own it" model
- Build tooling and AI-powered integrations to reduce cognitive load in cloud operations
- Architect, design, and implement simple and maintainable solutions
This is a high-impact role requiring both operational expertise and software development skills, with the ability to lead ambitious technical programs and set direction with senior engineering leaders across dozens of teams. The ideal candidate genuinely embraces AI tooling in day-to-day work and is motivated to make infrastructure AI-friendly.
**Requirements:**
- Extremely experienced in Kubernetes and its components, containerization, and AWS cloud
- Proven track record running Kubernetes and cloud-based production SaaS systems at scale
- Experience operating Kubernetes as a large fleet with hundreds of clusters
- Strong knowledge of data storage systems: SQL, MongoDB, ClickHouse, and Elasticsearch
- Strong operational and troubleshooting skills with Kubernetes, databases, and messaging systems
- Deep understanding of networking and production-level usage of service meshes and gateways
- Experience separating infrastructure configuration from application code at scale
- Experience with cell-based, multi-tenant, or multi-region architectures
- Proficiency in Python and Golang
- Evangelist of highly performant CI/CD practices supportive of agentic workflows
- Ability and desire to design, lead, influence, and deliver on ambitious technical roadmaps
**Nice to have:**
- Experience with Vespa
- Automated provisioning of new environments, regions, or cells end-to-end
- Management of large fleets of Kubernetes clusters with lifecycle management tools
- Production usage of Hashicorp Vault or similar secret management systems
