Senior Software Engineer, Backend

About Alloy.ai

At Alloy.ai, we work with consumer goods companies that make the products we eat, wear, and use every day, as well as the ones we occasionally splurge on. We’re tackling a real and complex problem for them—managing supply and demand in the face of constantly changing customer behavior, highly complex supply chain networks, 40-year-old data standards and labor-intensive manual processes.

Alloy.ai is a fast-growing, well-funded startup with an expanding presence across the world. Our team hails from successful startups, leading tech companies and Fortune 100 enterprises. We believe deeply in fostering individual ownership, iterating to excellence, focusing on what matters, communicating openly & respectfully, and supporting one another. 

We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. Alloy.ai is committed to creating an inclusive culture, and we celebrate diversity of all kinds.

About The Role

At Alloy.ai, our computation engine is at the heart of many of our platform’s critical functions. It powers inventory simulations, recommendation systems, forecasting, and serves as the foundation for our general-purpose analytics platform, enabling our customers to make data-driven decisions at scale.

We're looking for backend engineers with a focus on our data platform and our computation engine backend. There are many exciting and complex challenges ranging from aggregating complex data sets, modelling the supply chain, to computing inventory recommendations and producing other actionable insights for our customers. Some of our customers sell hundreds of thousands of unique products across hundreds of thousands of unique locations, with more data coming in daily, so scalability is key.

If algorithms, simulations, query engines, performance, and scalability sound like areas you're curious to explore, we think you'll love it here!

About You

You’re a problem-solver who enjoys diving deep into algorithms, data structures, and software architecture. You have prior experience in designing systems and enjoy tackling complex problems with simple, elegant and scalable solutions. 

You're highly collaborative and highly value transparency and open communication. You consider some of the key tools for an engineer to be code reviews, authoring design documents and reviewing those of others. 

You're comfortable with multiple programming languages and paradigms and curious to learn more. You thrive in a flat organization, appreciate transparency and actively pursue new ideas. 

What You Will Do

• Design, develop, and optimize Alloy.ai’s computation engine and data platform backend, enabling critical functionalities such as forecasting, simulations, recommendations, and real-time analytics.
• Collaborate with engineers across teams to ensure our data platform’s query engine integrates seamlessly with other components and scales effectively.
• Lead architectural design of complex software solutions, ensuring our platform stays efficient, robust, and scalable as we grow.
• Work closely with the Product team to translate customer needs into highly performant, maintainable, and flexible solutions.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers in best practices for software design, development, and system optimization.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest developments in query engine technologies, databases, and cloud platforms, and bring new ideas and tools to the team.
• Flex into other areas of application development based on our roadmap priorities.
• Contribute to Alloy.ai’s R&D roadmap by bringing your ideas into our product development cycle.

What We Are Looking For

• A Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative discipline (e.g., computer science, statistics, mathematics) or a equivalent work experience.
• 5+ years of industry experience in software engineering, with a focus on designing and building complex systems or query engines.
• Proven experience with one or more of the following query engine technologies: PostgreSQL, BigQuery, Databricks, Snowflake, or custom-built query engines.
• Strong proficiency in a JVM-based language (e.g., Java, Scala, Kotlin). Experience with Python or TypeScript is a plus.
• A solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, and computational mathematics. Experience with designing efficient data processing systems is a big plus.
• Experience with cloud platforms and distributed systems, and familiarity with the challenges of building scalable data systems in AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure environments.
• You have experience or are interested in learning how the global supply chain works, from retail sales and inventory data to tracking of orders and shipments.
• You have a genuine desire to help and work with other engineers via mentorship, pairing, and code reviews.
• You are a clear communicator both verbally and written with a knack for translating technical details to non-technical audiences.
• You have a “growth mindset” and tolerance for ambiguity; you don’t easily give up and always try to iterate to excellence.
• You’re excited about researching and using a wide range of technologies, ultimately focused on finding the right tool for the job.
• You care deeply about best practices for code quality, automation, and testing.

Role is a hybrid role based in Washington, DC. Hybrid is defined by our company as 3+ days/week in the office when not on vacation.

Unfortunately, remote employees will not be considered for this role.