Principal Software Engineer

Location: Remote (Preference for New York)

Reports to: President and Chief Product Officer

About Astera Holdings: Astera Holdings is a quantitative finance firm on a mission to redefine prediction markets—an emerging category of financial markets where people trade on the outcomes of real‑world events. Our three pillars form the Astera Flywheel: each generates proprietary data that feeds our central Astera Intelligence Engine, compounding our edge over time. Our culture is a Meritocracy of Minds, built on Radical Intellectual Honesty, a Scientific Approach to Everything, and Lean Intensity.

The Role: As a principal software engineer, you will be a fully IC owner responsible for shipping our consumer-facing platform, from concept to launch (0 to 1). You will lead the full-stack development, architecting and building a product with a consumer-grade user experience but institutional-grade power. This role demands an AI-native product builder ready to make critical architectural decisions and set the standard for software engineering at Astera. This is a foundational IC role with the expectation of growing into a technical leadership position as the team scales.

Tech-Stack Autonomy: You will have significant influence in selecting the technologies for the consumer platform. You will: (1) design the end-to-end service architecture; (2) prototype and evaluate frontend and backend frameworks; (3) make foundational choices for our API layers, databases, and client-side applications; and (4) establish best practices for development and deployment.

What You’ll Do

Full-Stack Product Development: Design, build, and scale features across the entire stack. Develop real-time user interfaces for live data streams, chat, notifications, and interactive visualizations.
Architectural Ownership: Own microservices and serverless functions from design to deployment. Make critical decisions about APIs, data models, and caching strategies to ensure low-latency performance.
Cross-Platform Experience: Architect the system to support a unified experience across web, iOS, and Android from day one, likely leveraging web technologies for initial mobile delivery.
AI Integration: Work closely with the Principal AI Engineer to seamlessly integrate our AI copilot into the platform's UI, building intuitive conversational interfaces and data displays.
Infrastructure & DevOps: Define and implement CI/CD pipelines, manage infrastructure as code (Terraform) on AWS, and ensure the platform is scalable and resilient.
Technical Leadership: Act as the technical anchor for the consumer platform, setting a high bar for code quality and shipping velocity, and mentoring future engineers through your work.

What You’ll Bring

A Shipper from Day Zero: 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of shipping products from 0 to 1, preferably at an AI or consumer tech startup.
Full-Stack Expertise: Deep proficiency in a modern web stack (e.g., TypeScript, Svelte/React, Node.js). You can single-handedly build and deploy complex features.
Architectural Acumen: Experience designing scalable, distributed systems. You understand the trade-offs between different architectural patterns, databases, and infrastructure choices.
Infra-Savvy: Hands-on experience with AWS, Terraform, and modern DevOps practices.
AI-Native: You must use AI coding tools (e.g., Claude, Cursor) to maximize your productivity. You are an expert programmer who loves to build.
Product Sense: A strong intuition for user experience and the ability to translate ambiguous product requirements into concrete technical solutions.

Nice to Have

Experience building real-time systems with WebSockets or other streaming technologies.
Familiarity with building and deploying applications for both web and mobile.
Experience in fintech or building data-intensive applications.

How We Hire

Intro Call (30m): Mutual fit and a discussion of your product building experience.
Product Architecture Deep Dive (60m): A collaborative discussion on the end-to-end architecture for the consumer platform, focusing on rationale and trade-offs.
Practical Collaboration (60m): A hands-on pairing session on a small coding problem, code review, or feature implementation.
Values & Vision (45m): Final conversation with the Leadership Team on culture, long-term vision, and your growth trajectory at Astera.

Why Astera

Build Your Vision: Be a founding engineer of a flagship consumer product and shape its technical destiny.
Compounding Advantage: Build the primary interface to the Astera Intelligence Engine, a system designed to have a compounding edge.
Elite Peers, High Autonomy: You are the expert. You will be given the trust and freedom to build, supported by world-class peers in data and AI.

Astera Holdings is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

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