Staff Embedded Client Platform Engineer

AlphaSense•New York, NY

About The Position

Own and evolve AlphaSense’s embedded client platform, starting with Excel, to bring AI‑powered market intelligence directly into the daily workflows of financial professionals. This role is responsible for building mission‑critical integrations inside constrained host environments where performance, correctness, and user trust are non‑negotiable. Excel and PowerPoint are the first and most important host environments today, but the mandate is broader: define durable client‑side integration patterns that can scale across tools, workflows, and future analyst surfaces. This is a Staff-level role with significant architectural ownership, deep hands‑on work, and long‑term leverage across the product. Why this role is important: Financial professionals live in Excel. One data corruption bug, one performance regression, or one broken enterprise deployment can permanently erode trust. At the same time, Excel is a highly constrained, non‑owned runtime with sharp edges, undocumented behavior, and strict performance ceilings. We are looking for an engineer who thrives in hostile integration environments, not someone who treats Excel as “just another web view.”

Requirements

7+ years building and operating production user‑facing software
Proven experience embedding software into a non‑owned host environment, such as:
Strong JavaScript/TypeScript skills and event‑driven programming experience
Track record of performance profiling and optimization in constrained runtimes
Zero‑tolerance mindset for data corruption and reliability issues
Experience with enterprise deployment, updates, version skew, and rollback
Strong testing and observability instincts for client‑side systems
Ability to mentor engineers and set technical standards

Nice To Haves

Built systems where <100ms latency materially impacted user trust
Experience debugging non‑deterministic, stateful, event‑driven systems
Background in financial systems, trading tools, or analyst workflows
Experience with offline‑first architectures and sync
History of working effectively with enterprise IT and security teams

Responsibilities

Own the architecture and reliability of AlphaSense’s Excel integrations (Office Add‑ins, JS/TS, legacy components)
Define clear boundaries between workbook state, plugin state, and cloud state
Ensure zero data corruption and strict Excel file integrity guarantees
Make complex operations feel instantaneous (<100ms local, <500ms remote)
Design for offline, slow networks, and enterprise restrictions (proxy, SSO, locked‑down IT)
Establish testing, observability, and deployment best practices for desktop/embedded environments
Unify fragmented Excel tools into a single, coherent client architecture
Create reusable abstractions for embedded client development
Define patterns that reduce Excel‑specific fragility over time
Mentor other engineers working in constrained client environments