Staff Software Engineer (Cloud Infrastructure)

Join Altruist, a fast-growing fintech company, as a Staff Software Engineer specializing in Cloud Infrastructure. In this high-impact role, you will architect, build, and operate the AWS-based infrastructure that powers our broker-dealer and clearing platform. You will have significant technical influence, shape infrastructure strategy, lead complex cross-functional initiatives, and elevate the entire team through mentorship and knowledge sharing. This is not a ticket-driven role; you will own critical infrastructure domains end-to-end and drive technical decisions that affect the reliability, security, and scalability of systems handling real financial transactions.

• Architecting, building, and operating the AWS-based infrastructure that powers the broker-dealer and clearing platform.
• Owning critical infrastructure domains end-to-end and driving technical decisions that affect the reliability, security, and scalability of systems.
• Leading cross-team initiatives, aligning stakeholders, unblocking other engineers, and representing infrastructure perspectives in leadership discussions.

• Excellent technical communication skills — ability to write clear ADRs, present to leadership, and translate infrastructure complexity for non-technical stakeholders
• Deep expertise in CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Jenkins) with experience designing deployment strategies for multi-service architectures
• Proven experience designing and operating observability platforms (Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, CloudWatch, OpenSearch/ELK) at organizational scale
• Strong experience with database infrastructure and data layer architecture (Aurora PostgreSQL, RDS, ElastiCache/Redis, OpenSearch, DynamoDB)
• 7+ years of hands-on experience in cloud infrastructure engineering, with deep, production-proven expertise in AWS
• Expert-level proficiency with Terraform, including module design, state management strategies, and establishing IaC standards for engineering teams
• Demonstrated ability to lead disaster recovery planning, execute DR simulations, and design HA architecture patterns for mission-critical systems
• Expert-level understanding of cloud networking (VPC architecture, Transit Gateway, peering, DNS, load balancing) and security (IAM, KMS, WAF, GuardDuty, Secrets Manager)
• Strong Linux systems engineering skills and advanced scripting proficiency (Python, Bash, or Go)
• Extensive production experience operating Kubernetes (EKS strongly preferred) at scale — cluster lifecycle management, multi-tenancy patterns, Helm governance, and GitOps workflows
• Track record of owning and driving infrastructure initiatives end-to-end — from design and architecture through implementation, rollout, and operational excellence
• Proven track record of mentoring engineers and elevating team capabilities through knowledge sharing, design reviews, and tooling improvements
• Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification
• 7+ years of infrastructure or platform engineering experience, including 5+ years operating at a senior or staff level
• Experience with event streaming platforms at scale (Amazon MSK / Apache Kafka) including cluster operations, partition strategy, and consumer group management
• Proficiency with policy-as-code frameworks (OPA/Rego, Sentinel, Kyverno) for infrastructure governance and compliance automation
• Experience authoring RFCs, ADRs, or technical strategy documents that influenced engineering-wide decisions
• Contributions to open-source projects, conference talks, or published technical writing
• AWS certifications at the Professional or Specialty level: Solutions Architect Professional, DevOps Engineer Professional, Security Specialty, or Machine Learning Specialty
• Demonstrated experience with AI/ML infrastructure: provisioning GPU compute, SageMaker/Bedrock integration, vector databases, MLOps pipelines, or AIOps automation in production
• Hands-on experience with API gateway management and platform design (Kong, AWS API Gateway)
• Experience defining and executing organizational rollout strategies for AI developer tools, including governance frameworks, usage analytics, and cost management
• FinOps certification or demonstrated experience leading cloud cost optimization programs at scale
• Experience in financial services, fintech, broker-dealer, or other heavily regulated industries with FINRA/SEC compliance requirements