SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 181,000 - 265,000 / annual
Altruist is transforming the wealth management industry by building an AI platform for financial advisors. The company partners with financial advisors nationwide to help them grow, optimize resources, and deliver superior outcomes for clients.
You will be an AI-native Staff Software Engineer who shapes the technical direction of Altruist's data and AI platforms while remaining hands-on in building systems. As a senior individual contributor, you will lead complex initiatives across teams, translate ambiguous business needs into practical technical plans, and build frameworks that other engineers can leverage. You will own outcomes from design through production, balancing delivery speed with reliability, security, and cost.
Key responsibilities include:
- Setting technical direction for scalable data pipelines and data serving platforms, aligning architecture with business priorities
- Designing and building high-performance systems managing the full lifecycle of financial data (ingestion, transformation, serving, consumption)
- Creating shared frameworks and platforms that establish AI as a core company capability, including reliable data access for AI applications and agents
- Identifying opportunities to improve advisor experiences and internal workflows with AI, partnering with product and engineering teams
- Leading cross-team initiatives, clarifying technical tradeoffs and dependencies, and guiding delivery from design through rollout
- Establishing standards for data quality, observability, and recovery; partnering with Security on data protection and access controls
- Improving query performance, platform reliability, and infrastructure efficiency; resolving complex production issues
- Advancing effective use of AI throughout the software development lifecycle while maintaining accountability for correctness and security
- Mentoring engineers, leading design reviews, and raising engineering standards through technical guidance and hands-on contributions
The role is based in Los Angeles, CA, with office spaces also in Culver City, CA, San Francisco, CA, and Dallas, TX. The company offers a one-month work-from-anywhere policy annually.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of leading complex platform or distributed systems initiatives and delivering results across teams
- Strong proficiency in Python or Java; strong SQL skills; ability to design, build, debug, and operate production systems
- Deep experience with databases, data warehouses, ETL/ELT pipelines, and mature data processes at scale; understanding of data modeling, query optimization, and batch vs. real-time processing tradeoffs
- Experience with large-scale offline processing and batch pipelines using Spark or similar frameworks, including failure recovery and performance tuning
- Experience designing and operating cloud services, especially AWS, with working knowledge of Kubernetes, deployment practices, and observability
- Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Claude Code); sound judgment about their limitations; ability to help others use them effectively
- Experience setting architectural direction, writing technical proposals, building alignment across teams, and mentoring engineers without formal authority
- Ability to turn ambiguous needs into clear priorities, make pragmatic build-versus-buy decisions, and balance immediate delivery with long-term platform needs
- Ownership mindset: taking responsibility for business outcomes, carrying changes through production, and supporting built systems
- Strong communication skills; ability to explain complex ideas clearly and work effectively with technical and nontechnical partners
- Resilience and humility; ability to navigate uncertainty, learn from setbacks, and adapt approach based on evidence
- Creative problem-solving; ability to question assumptions, identify root causes, and develop practical solutions
- B.A. or B.S. in Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
- Snowflake, Airflow, or dbt in production environments
- Building and operating AI applications, agent frameworks, or shared services for governed data access with evaluation and monitoring
- Financial services data or other environments where data accuracy, privacy, and reliability are essential
