Director of Engineering Cloud Platform at AlphaSense

About AlphaSense

AlphaSense is a market intelligence platform used by the world's leading companies and financial institutions. Since 2011, our AI-based technology has helped professionals make smarter business decisions by delivering insights from an extensive universe of public and private content – including company filings, event transcripts, news, trade journals, and equity research. Our platform is trusted by over 3,500 enterprise customers, including a majority of the S&P 500. Headquartered in New York City, AlphaSense employs over 1,200 people across offices in the U.S., U.K., Finland, India, and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.alpha-sense.com.

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The Role

The Cloud Platform function at AlphaSense is responsible for providing resources (cloud or operator managed) and environments (accounts, networking, Kubernetes clusters) for the rest of our engineering teams to run our solutions on. 

As Director of Engineering for the Cloud Platform, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the strategic direction, technical development and management of our platform engineering teams. The teams cover key areas, such as Kubernetes, Public Cloud Features (AWS, GCP, Azure), Kubernetes Operators, FinOps and Storages Management. The role encompasses technical and engineering leadership, ensuring the effective operation and evolution of our cloud infrastructure and managed services, along Kubernetes clusters and operator managed resources. 

Candidates should be able to foster a culture of innovation and excellence, combining in-depth understanding of technical and architectural patterns with direct hands-on contributions to their implementation, leading by example and setting the bar for others to follow. Having experience and proven capacity to set direction and own the engineering “how” of the foundational capabilities of a modern platform is a must, but so is enjoying experimentation and integration of the technologies that best allow a business to achieve its goals. In this sense, the ideal candidate would have a thorough understanding of the CNCF landscape and a clear vision of trends and solutions in this space, experimenting with key projects whenever time allows, while reviewing other organizations' experiences and results, considering their practical implications for our concrete situation and needs. 

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic technical direction and oversight for the various engineering teams part of the Cloud Platform function
• Guide the development and life cycle management of opinionated Kubernetes clusters, focusing on scalability, security, cost-effectiveness and standardization
• Support the extension of Kubernetes with cloud-managed and self-managed resources, ensuring they meet internal customer needs effectively
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and best practices in cloud platform management and Kubernetes within and across engineering teams
• Support and mentor team leads/managers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and psychological safety that enables personal and professional growth
• Collaborate closely with other Senior Engineering Managers or Directors overseeing DevEx and SRE teams to align strategies and initiatives
• Drive the recruitment, development, and retention of top talent within the teams
• Ensure the support that teams require to meet their commitments, contributing to their strategic planning and resource allocation
• Promote a collaborative environment, bridging the gap between different teams and time zones (Europe, US and India)
• Uphold and improve operational processes, focusing on the full lifecycle of cloud services and Kubernetes environments
• Advocate for and implement architectural best practices in cloud platform development and operations, and support such practices across the whole Engineering organization
• Engage in company-wide initiatives, supporting the goals and reach of the Platform Engineering and Operations mission

Requirements

• Proven experience as a senior technical leader in a Cloud or Kubernetes Platform team  or similar role, with a focus on cloud platforms, Kubernetes and DBaaS support
• Deep expertise on Kubernetes (LCM management, self-managed and cloud managed flavors, architectures, operations, etc.), cloud infrastructure (AWS and at least one of GCP, Azure), and ideally databases (at least one of MongoDB, Clickhouse or Elasticsearch)
• Experience in software development in general, with skills in a high level language (e.g. Golang) and familiarity with modern development practices. OSS contributions are a plus
• Thorough understanding of the CNCF landscape and a clear vision of trends and solutions in this space (Crossplane experience is a great plus)
• The ability to carry out experiments with key technologies, with hands-on contributions along with the capacity to define their scope and evaluation criteria
• Demonstrated ability in leading distributed teams, ideally across different geographies
• Excellent communication and servant leadership skills, with a track record of mentoring and developing engineering teams
• Knowledge of operational best practices for Kubernetes environments, including security, cost management, and scalability
• Commitment to promoting diversity and creating an inclusive and safe work environment

You can apply by sending your cover letter and resume through the application form.