Staff Software Engineer

Kepler • New York City, NY

12h

About The Position

We're building the ground truth platform for AI. Generic tools hallucinate data, confabulate reports, and don't show their work. We made accuracy the only possible outcome: every answer traces to its source, every calculation is reproducible, every insight is defensible. We're starting in finance and building the foundational data layer for anywhere decisions depend on trustworthy data. Kepler was founded by two Palantir veterans (20 years combined) who built core parts of Gotham and Foundry, created Palantir Quiver (the analytics engine behind $100M+ deals with BP and Airbus), led major DoD projects, and served as Head of Business Engineering at Citadel. Kepler is backed by founders of OpenAI, Facebook AI, MotherDuck, dbt, Outerbounds, and others. The Role You'll define the technical foundation of Kepler's AI research platform. You'll own the architecture of our most critical systems: backend services that orchestrate AI workflows, data pipelines that process billions of data points, and the infrastructure that financial professionals rely on for million-dollar decisions. You'll set technical strategy, drive cross-cutting initiatives, and elevate engineering quality across the organization. This role is for engineers who want to shape the technical direction of a company building foundational technology at the intersection of AI and finance, where your architectural decisions directly impact how clients make critical business decisions. Within your first 90 days, you will: Own and deliver a platform-critical system that shapes technical direction Establish architectural patterns and standards adopted across the engineering org Drive a cross-cutting technical initiative from conception to production Build relationships across the company and influence product and engineering roadmap

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with a track record of technical leadership
• Architecture: Designed and scaled distributed systems handling mission-critical workloads
• Backend: Deep expertise in Python or Node.js, API design, PostgreSQL, AWS
• Data: Large-scale data systems, ETL pipelines, real-time processing
• Technical leadership: Experience setting technical direction, driving cross-functional initiatives, and mentoring senior engineers
• Influence: Ability to align engineering, product, and business stakeholders around technical decisions
• Communication: Can articulate complex technical trade-offs clearly to any audience
• Track record of building and shipping systems that matter
• Thrives with high autonomy and high ownership

Nice To Haves

• Financial services experience preferred but not required

Responsibilities

• Define system architecture: Design the foundational systems that power the platform. Make high-stakes architectural decisions that determine scalability, reliability, and developer velocity.
• Drive technical strategy: Identify the highest-leverage technical investments. Balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health.
• Build enterprise data integrations: Architect robust pipelines that ingest and normalize data from scattered sources: public filings, earnings transcripts, market data feeds, research reports. Transform fragmented data into a unified platform.
• Integrate AI into production: Shape how language models and AI capabilities are deployed across research workflows at enterprise scale.
• Own platform reliability: Set the standard for production excellence. Comprehensive testing, monitoring, deployment pipelines, incident response.
• Elevate engineering quality: Establish best practices, drive code quality, and raise the technical bar across the team.
• Mentor and grow engineers: Technical leadership, architectural guidance, and career development for engineers at all levels.
• Collaborate with leadership: Work directly with founders on technical strategy, hiring, and company direction.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, 401k, insurance for employees and dependents
• Automatic coverage for basic life, AD&D, and disability insurance
• Daily lunch in office
• Development environment budget - latest MacBook Pro, multiple monitors, ergonomic setup, and any development tools you need
• Unlimited PTO policy
• "Build anything" budget - dedicated funding for whatever tools, libraries, datasets, or infrastructure you need to solve technical challenges, no questions asked
• Learning budget - attend any conference, course, or program that makes you better at what we're building

What This Job Offers

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