Director of Engineering

Altana is the world’s first Value Chain Management System, a collaborative, public-private network that enables customers to take command of their extended supplier and distribution networks from raw material origins to the sale of finished products. By applying artificial intelligence to the world’s largest body of supply chain data, Altana reveals these previously opaque global networks and powers workflows across them. Customers like Boston Scientific, L.L.Bean, Maersk, US Customs and Border Protection, and the UK Department of Business and Trade use Altana to build secure, resilient, efficient, and sustainable global value chains.

We have built a fundamental understanding of how the world’s economy works, and the implications for global resiliency, sustainability and opportunity are enormous. Backed by leading investors and used by the world’s most important organizations, Altana powers a new era of globalization founded on a shared source of truth on the global supply chain.

This is a lofty mission, and our success depends on building a diverse, global team and fostering an environment in which it can thrive. We operate in accordance with our values: we embrace reality as we work to change it; we focus on value creation, not capture; we foster diversity and embrace difference; and we go on offense. When you join Altana, you’ll be joining a vibrant, collaborative team working together to solve complex problems with the potential for global societal impact.  

The Opportunity at Altana

This role will be responsible for managing and optimizing the underlying data, engineering, and infrastructure supporting Altana’s primary product, the Atlas. Reporting directly to the CTO, you will lead several teams of talented engineers and data scientists responsible for building the core knowledge graph platform, partner integrations and patterns necessary to power the most comprehensive supply chain understanding in the world.

Your Responsibilities

• Grow, direct and manage a multi-functional team of software engineers, data engineers, and ML engineers
• Design the organization, process, and tools to achieve the overall goals
• Engage in partnership integration discussions, lead technical design discussions, and product integrations to help expand Altana’s business offerings
• Build both a functional production environment, and foster the environment of experimentation and collaboration to push the boundaries of insight capable on top of the supply chain
• Lead the design, development, and testing of data applications, services, interfaces, ETL processes, reporting, and other workflow initiatives.
• Partner with our Founders, CTO, and VP of Machine Learning to design and drive the integration of AI and ML algorithms and methodologies into our platform.
• Create and maintain optimal data pipeline architecture to support the efficient processing of data.
• Build, scale, and develop a high-functioning platform engineering team, fostering a culture of technical excellence, problem-solving, and collaboration

About You

• Experience building, leading, and developing best-in-class engineering teams, especially in rapidly scaling environment, and have led or been part of a rapidly scaling organization
• 10+ years of real-world experience developing or managing complex engineering systems
• Track record of success tackling large-scale data engineering, data optimization, and data architecture challenges, particularly in fast-paced ML/AI-enabled products and services
• Conversant in knowledge graphs, federated learning systems, graph algorithms, deep learning, and network analysis.
• Experience with large scale data processing systems such as spark, dask/ray, hadoop, etc.
• A hands-on leader who leads from the front, and is willing to help the team deliver
• Strong sense of shared ownership and a collaborative disposition
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to navigate up and down the conceptual stack from customer needs to data storage optimizations
• You don’t hesitate to go to the dentist during the work day, but you’re also the person that’s on your laptop working on the team’s hardest problems to relax
• Not required, but a plus if you've worked with supply chain data, company data, have familiarity with B2B economic modeling

Why it’s great to work at Altana

• We love to collaborate, and we win as a team!
• We are committed to engineering excellence
• We value personal and professional development
• We learn from diverse backgrounds and perspectives
• We impact the world, from enabling developing countries to identifying drug traffickers

At Altana, we believe that a diverse workforce enables greater creativity, performance, and adaptability. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and welcome you to join us as you are. Our employment opportunities and decisions are based on business needs and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, family care or medical leave status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by the laws or regulations in the areas in which we operate. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type, in any situation.