Principal Engineer (Data Platform)

Atlan

1d • Remote

About The Position

Atlan is building the context layer for AI agents and applications - transforming how data platforms power the next generation of AI. We're looking for a Staff and Principal Engineer to help architect and scale the foundational data plane that makes it easy to build apps, agents, and solutions for the AI era.
You'll work on systems handling billions of assets, serving 100K+ users, with 99.99% availability targets. This is a high-agency role where you'll define technical direction, drive multi-quarter initiatives, and pioneer AI-native development practices.

Requirements

• 8+ years in platform engineering, infrastructure, or backend systems at a SaaS company
• Experience building enterprise-scale distributed systems at scale
• Deep expertise in multi-tenant architectures and tenant isolation strategies
• Strong Kubernetes, containerization, and cloud infrastructure skills (AWS/GCP/Azure)
• Hands-on experience with distributed systems patterns—service mesh, event-driven architecture, orchestration
• Track record of driving multi-quarter technical initiatives from concept through production at scale
• Deep Expertise in One or More Lakehouse architectures
• Vector stores
• Graph databases
• Streaming systems

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing contract-driven or schema-first data platforms
• Familiarity with Temporal or similar workflow orchestration systems
• Data quality frameworks, observability systems, and cost attribution at scale
• Experience supporting enterprise workloads with strict compliance requirements
• CI/CD pipeline design and GitOps practices

Responsibilities

• Design and build platform services—APIs, infrastructure components, runtime systems, and ingestion frameworks—at enterprise scale
• Architect the context store that transforms lakehouse infrastructure into AI-ready systems with multimodal capabilities (structured, unstructured, vector, graph)
• Solve complex multi-tenant isolation and scaling problems for enterprise SaaS
• Design data contracts governing ingestion, validation, processing, routing, storage, and serving across heterogeneous systems
• Own critical shared infrastructure including lakehouse (Iceberg/Polaris), vector stores, graph databases, and OLTP systems
• Drive technical standards through RFCs, architecture reviews, and documentation
• Mentor senior engineers and influence architecture decisions across teams
• Write production code using AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Cursor)
• Debug distributed systems issues across Kubernetes, workflow orchestration, and microservices

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed