Lead Software Development Engineer - Infrastructure (Seattle)

About Amperity—Why This, Why NowMost customer data is a lie by omission.Every consumer brand wants to know its customers. Unfortunately, almost none actually do. Data is scattered across a dozen systems, half of it contradicts the other half, and insights teams are forced to act on incomplete guesses. We started Amperity ten years ago because that gap—between what a brand believes about its customers and what is true—is the most expensive problem in the industry, and nobody had solved it.With a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, we did. Our patented identity resolution takes billions of messy, conflicting records and resolves them into an accurate picture of a real human being—in hours, not months. That’s not a feature; it’s the foundation everything else stands on. It’s why more than 400 brands—like Alaska Airlines, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Virgin Atlantic, and Brooks Running—trust us with the one thing they can’t afford to get wrong, and why IDC named us a Leader in the category in 2026.Now we’re doing something harder. We’re rebuilding Amperity as an AI-first company—not bolting a chatbot onto old software, but putting agents at the center of how customer data actually gets used. We shipped the industry’s first identity resolution agent, then the first enterprise Customer Data Agent that turns a plain-language question into a live segment without waiting on an engineering queue. The bet underneath all of it is simple, and we think it’s correct: The potential of AI will not be realized for a brand until it’s grounded and activated against a true, unified view of the customer. The market at-large is focused on intelligence, and we are focused on being the ones who can make it trustworthy.So here’s the honest pitch. If you want a tour of a category that’s already been figured out, this isn’t it. If you want to help decide what the next version of an entire industry looks like—alongside people who are remarkably exceptional at what they do, solving a problem that requires deep, sustained focus—this is one of the few places that work exists. Our goal is to build a highly impactful, generational business.We measure our success by one standard: whether what we build moves the business. Return on cognition, not return on hype. If that’s how you want to be measured, we would love to speak with you.The RoleAmperity is looking for a Lead Software Development Engineer to join Team BASS. Team BASS is the Swiss-army-knife of our engineering organization, overseeing the critical intersection of developer productivity, shared service platforms, and high-scale Spark infrastructure.You will be the team's strategic anchor, bringing the deep experience necessary to evaluate enterprise patterns. You will establish a multi-year strategic North Star for our internal platforms. You will work with Product and partners to connect the technical strategy to product strategy, customer value, our priorities, and measurable outcomes. We need a leader who has seen complex problems solved at scale in multiple ways and can translate that wisdom into clear, simple technical direction for a high-performing team.What You’ll DoGuide Strategic Architecture: Lead the full architectural health of the BASS platform, connecting technical decisions to multi-year horizons and organizational strategy.Establish Technical Standards: Define technically excellent for developer productivity and automation, setting the bar for scalability and simplicity across the org.Mentor and Multiplier: Shift focus from personal execution to team outcomes, raising the execution standard of those around you through sponsorship and feedback.Navigate Ambiguity: Seek out team-level ambiguity and turn company-level strategic uncertainty into executable engineering plans.Systemic Reliability: Act as the strategic anchor for the team's most complex operational challenges, driving architectural improvements that reduce systemic risk across the platform.AI Frontier Leadership: Define the team-wide philosophy on how AI changes how we build, moving beyond productivity tools to platform-level engineering shifts.Interesting ProblemsDeep Technical Judgment: You have experience with major architectural decisions that proved correct over multi-year horizons.Complex Problem Solver: People seek you out on the hardest problems and you can cut through technical complexity to reach the right answer quickly.AI Strategy & Agentic Evolution for BASS:As the Lead SDE for BASS, you will define the 2-3 year AI North Starfor our internal platforms. You will anticipate how frontier AI and agentic workflows shift our approach to Build, Automation, Spark, and Services.Agentic DevOps & CI/CD: Architect systems where AI agents autonomously identify build failures, resolve dependency conflicts, and improve pipelines.Predictive Spark & Infrastructure: Move the platform from reactive to proactive by implementing AI-driven models that predict cluster resource needs to eliminate OOM errors.AI-Native Governance: Ensure data privacy and PII posture are native constraints in all AI-assisted systems, making the right thing the path of least resistance.Intelligent Automation: Simplify complex service discovery and log analysis, allowing engineers to work with BASS infrastructure via natural language or autonomous agents.Strategic AI Stewardship: Protect the team from systemic risk by governing AI use in elevated-risk contexts while remaining on the leading edge of adoption.About YouTechnical leadership experience with experience leading architectural strategy for high-scale, distributed systems.Expertise in large-scale data processing (Spark or a similar distributed framework), with the ability to evaluate complex enterprise patterns and explain the why behind architectural choices.A love for learning and the ability to ramp up quickly on new stacks: While we use Clojure, we value your ability to apply deep architectural principles to our language of choice.Practitioner-level knowledge of AI/ML: Experience with integration of AI/ML best practices, specifically how to leverage LLMs and agentic workflows for infrastructure automation and developer velocity.Expertise in driving clarity within complex environments, showing the ability to turn high-level business or technical uncertainty into concrete engineering direction.Experience working with diverse partners to translate technical tradeoffs into outcomes that serve both the business and the long-term health of the platform.A demonstrated history of mentorship, having coached other senior engineers and built technical pipelines that outlast any single project.LocationSeattle, WA Amperity’s work model operates on four in-office days each week and one designated remote workday on Wednesdays. We value the collaboration, connection, and learning that come from working together in person.CompensationBase Salary: $196,000-$270,000. Individual compensation within this range will depend on several factors, including your skills, experience, education/training, geographic location and the level at which you join. We also consider internal equity, market conditions, and overall business needs.Cash Incentives: Cash incentives are also available.Stock Options: The opportunity for ownership is an exciting part of Amperity’s total compensation package. Every employee at Amperity receives a new-hire equity grant, commensurate with the scope of their position.BenefitsWe offer all the benefits you'd expect from a great place to work: 100% employee healthcare coverage, transportation subsidies, a comfortable work environment with plenty of snacks, and other employee experience perks like events and activities, both in-person and remote. We also offer self-managed PTO and the flexibility to do your best work in the way that works for you. We provide an inclusive environment where you'll be challenged to find and unlock your full potential, surrounded by a team of world-class people driving for excellence. For more details on our benefits, please see our US Benefits & Perks Guide.Amperity is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and reproductive health choices), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as someone with a disability, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law.