Tech Lead - Data Platform Team

Surf AI is the agentic operations platform for enterprise security teams. We don't just surface risk, we close it. Our platform connects context across identity, cloud, HR, IT, and SaaS systems, and uses specialized AI agents to drive remediation end-to-end, with human oversight at every step.

We're backed by Accel, Cyberstarts, and Boldstart Ventures, and trusted by Fortune 500 enterprises already deploying Surf in production.

Our team is small and senior, with deep roots in identity, security, and enterprise infrastructure. We work at the intersection of agentic AI and applied security - and we take seriously what it means to build systems that act in real enterprise environments.

Who are we looking for?

As a Tech Lead, you’ll sit at the intersection of data engineering, ML systems, and platform architecture. You’ll own the patterns, guardrails, and data platform capabilities that let teams ship AI-native, low-latency experiences at scale safely, reliably, and cost-effectively.

What you'll do

• Own the data platform end-to-end: Design and operate batch and streaming pipelines (lakehouse, CDC, real-time ingestion) with strong data contracts, quality and lineage.
• Enable production AI/ML systems: Architect and support LLM and ML data pipelines - embeddings, vector search, RAG workflows, and real-time inference.
• Set architectural standards and guardrails: Define contract-first APIs and event schemas. Establish SLOs for latency freshness, reliability, and cost through design reviews and technical leadership.
• Design resilient distributed systems: Apply deep expertise in event-driven and microservices architectures, including backfill, idempotency, retries, and DLQs to scale safely.
• Modernize pragmatically: Guide adoption and best-practice use of Databricks, Kafka, Dagster, Kubernetes, Terraform, and cloud-native services.
• Lead by influence: Mentor engineers, partner with Product, ML and Platform teams, and turn goals into clear architectures, execution plans, and measurable outcomes.

Required Skills & Experience

• Senior technical leadership: 5+ years operating as a Tech Lead, Data Architect in AI/ML-intensive or data-heavy systems, with ~10+ years of hands-on engineering experience overall.
• Distributed systems expertise: Deep understanding of microservices and event-driven architectures, including backpressure, idempotency, retries, DLQs, and contract-first API design.
• Data platform mastery: Proven experience across batch and streaming pipelines, lakehouse architectures, orchestration and data governance/lineage.
• Hands-on builder: Comfortable working with tools such as ClickHouse, Databricks, Airflow, Kafka, Kubernetes, Terraform, and cloud-native services on AWS, GCP, and Azure.
• Nice to have: Practical experience with LLM-based systems, embeddings, vector databases, RAG pipelines, and real-time production inference.

Why Join Us?
If you want to work on foundational systems, ship AI into production, and help define how agentic security actually operates, this is an opportunity to do it early and with real ownership.