Chief Engineer | Location: [USA or India/Remote] Commitment: Part-time to start, evolving into full-time status Equity: Rightful sweat-equity stake for the right partner About Athena: Athena is pioneering Analytics-as-a-Service through a true 'Services-as-Software' model: an enterprise-grade AI engine that embeds seamlessly into our clients??IT environments, delivering real-time insights and decision intelligence without heavy consulting or custom builds. We??e creating a new category and need a visionary technologist to lead our architectural foundation. About Us: We??e a fast-growing tech startup revolutionizing the analytics consulting space with our outcome-based analytics-as-a-service platform in the fast emerging 'Services as Software' category. We aim to deliver an enterprise-grade, secure, and scalable system to our clients while fostering an environment of innovation and agility. Role Overview: As Chief Engineer, you will be the technical cornerstone of Athena. You??e shipped data and AI systems at scale??n-prem and in the cloud??nd you love turning cutting-edge research (model context protocols, agentic AI) into hardened production services. You??l architect, build, and own every layer of the platform, from data ingestion and security through multi-agent orchestration to performance-critical decision APIs. Key Responsibilities: ??Platform Architecture & Roadmap ??Define and evolve Athena?? microservices architecture for scalability, resilience, and low latency. ??Lead adoption of Model Context Protocols to ensure every AI workflow understands its data and business context. ??Evaluate and integrate emerging AI/ML frameworks and agentic AI paradigms. ??Data & Integration Infrastructure ??Design robust connectors for any data source??elational, NoSQL, streaming (Kafka/Kinesis), APIs, and third-party feeds. ??Architect hybrid batch/streaming ETL pipelines that support real-time analytics and model training. ??Ensure schema flexibility and versioning to support diverse client environments. ??AI Orchestration & Guided Agents ??Build the runtime for agentic AI: multi-agent coordination, reinforcement-learning loops, and safe human-in-the-loop handoffs. ??Implement policy engines for contextual decisioning, auditability, and regulatory compliance (particularly in financial services). ??Security, Compliance & Reliability ??Embed enterprise-grade security: OAuth2/OpenID SSO, fine-grained RBAC, encryption at rest/in transit, and immutable audit logs. ??Define and enforce SLAs/SLOs; implement chaos testing, canary deployments, and full-stack observability (logs, metrics, tracing). ??Lead SOC2/ISO-27001 alignment and regular security reviews. ??Team Leadership & Culture ??Mentor and scale a high-caliber engineering team??nstill a ??ou build it, you run it??mindset, DevOps best practices, and strong automation discipline. ??Collaborate closely with Product, Data Science, and Customer Success to translate business needs into production-ready features. ??Foster a culture of continuous improvement, innovation, and shared ownership. Qualifications & Experience 10+ years building and operating large-scale data and AI systems in production, including in regulated industries (financial services preferred). Deep expertise in distributed systems (microservices, Kubernetes), streaming platforms (Kafka, Kinesis), and modern data stores. Hands-on with MLOps, Model Context Protocols, or similar AI governance frameworks. Proficient in Go, Python, or Java, with strong software craftsmanship and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible). Experience architecting and shipping agentic AI or guided-agent orchestration platforms. Strong track record of embedding security and compliance at every layer. Why Athena? Category Creator: Lead the technology behind a platform redefining a $100B consulting industry. High Impact: Your work will directly empower CXOs to move from months-long analytics projects to real-time, AI-driven decisioning. Innovation Playground: Opportunity to experiment with the latest in AI, data engineering, and software architecture. Ownership & Autonomy: Shape every aspect of the platform and build the team that brings it to life.
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