Principal Software Engineer

At Albatross, we’re building the second pillar of AI: a perception layer that understands how users actually experience content, in real time. Trained on live user interactions, Albatross learns and reasons on the fly. Our technology powers real-time, in-session discovery by adapting to evolving user interests, in real-time. We have raised significant funding and our platform already operates at scale, with billions of events being processed and hundreds of millions of predictions served. The Role

The Principal Software Engineer will lead the design and development of real-time AI personalization infrastructure. They will architect event-driven systems that handle millions of requests with ultra-low latency and collaborate with data science teams to scale machine learning models in production. More specifically:

• Architect and design high-performance, event-driven backend systems handling millions of requests with ultra-low latency.
• Lead engineering initiatives: define requirements, set direction, and guide subteams from concept to delivery.
• Build and optimize performance-critical services for concurrency and memory efficiency.
• Design and implement scalable event-driven architectures using modern messaging platforms (NATS).
• Continuously benchmark and tune systems to maintain sub-millisecond response times.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality, performant software.
• Shape long-term technical strategy and roadmap to balance performance, scalability, and business goals.

10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a proven track record leading technical teams and delivering complex systems from design to deployment.

• Strong understanding of system design, scalability, and performance optimization.
• Proficiency in one or more languages such as TypeScript, Rust, Python, or Javascript, Go, Scala, Java, or Ruby.

Strong background in DevOps and cloud infrastructure: Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Terraform, Docker. Strong communication skills in English. Bonus points if familiarity with machine learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch) and production deployment. Flexibility to work from anywhere across Europe.