Senior Platform Engineer (x/f/m) - Backend Platform

Senior Platform Engineer · Senior · Full Time

Anywhere in France, Belgium, SpainEUR 80k – 120k2d ago
Apply for this role

Opens Alan's application page

Role

What you'll do.

Join Alan's Backend Platform team as a Senior Platform Engineer to architect and own the foundational backend systems that serve 1M+ members across Europe's leading preventative health insurance platform. You will lead the strategic transformation from a Python monolith to scalable microservices, designing event pipelines, data replication systems, and distributed service infrastructure while mentoring product teams and shaping backend engineering standards across 200+ engineers. This is a rare opportunity to build mission-critical infrastructure for a regulated healthcare system while establishing best practices that influence engineering culture company-wide.

Responsibilities

  • Own the Event Pipeline Architecture: Design, implement, and maintain the asynchronous event infrastructure (Postgres outbox, Redis Streams, S3 archive) that enables 20+ components and services to communicate reliably. Define delivery guarantees, ordering semantics, idempotence patterns, and retry strategies. Scale this from production-ready to a self-service platform that product teams adopt autonomously without platform team intervention.
  • Lead Data Replication Strategy: Build and optimize the data replication subsystem where services publish read-only tables and other services maintain fresh local copies for efficient joins. Implement consistency mechanisms, handle replication lag, and establish monitoring to eliminate slow cross-component queries. This directly replaces performance bottlenecks in the current monolithic architecture.
  • Execute Monolith Decomposition: Drive the incremental extraction of capabilities from the Python monolith into independently scalable services. Create service templates, establish APIs between services, implement distributed tracing, and develop dependency management tooling. Start with pilot projects and translate learnings into reusable playbooks that enable other engineering teams to split services safely in production.
  • Manage Shared Runtime Layer: Own the reliability and performance of foundational runtime components including queues, caching layers, and transaction infrastructure. Define and monitor Service Level Objectives (SLOs), establish alerting thresholds, measure headroom, and capacity plan for growth from 1M to 10M members across multiple countries.
  • Establish Backend Engineering Standards: Collaborate with 200+ engineers to define backend architecture rules, patterns, and best practices at Alan. Create decision records and architectural framing documents that guide how services communicate, handle data consistency, manage failures, and evolve. Influence engineering culture and establish conventions without direct authority through clear documentation and demonstration of impact.
  • Build Platform Adoption and Enablement: Position backend building blocks as self-service platforms that product teams adopt independently. Measure success by adoption rate and reduction in platform team bottlenecks. Provide clear documentation, examples, and guardrails that enable developers to implement patterns correctly without requiring platform team support for routine tasks.
  • Ensure Regulated Data Integrity: Implement and maintain systems that handle sensitive health data with compliance rigor. Design for data residency requirements across France, Belgium, Spain, and Canada. Establish auditability, transaction consistency, and recovery procedures that meet healthcare regulatory standards while maintaining system performance.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Backend System Design with Production Ownership

    5+ years of backend engineering building libraries, frameworks, internal platforms, or infrastructure that other teams depend on. Demonstrated experience running systems in production, responding to incidents, and owning reliability outcomes. Experience with systems that had measurable adoption across multiple teams.

  • Distributed Systems Fundamentals

    Deep hands-on experience with event-driven architectures, messaging systems, and asynchronous communication patterns. Proven understanding of delivery guarantees (at-least-once, exactly-once), message ordering, idempotence, retry logic, and failure scenarios. Experience designing systems that maintain correctness under failure conditions and network partitions.

  • PostgreSQL Advanced Administration

    In-depth PostgreSQL knowledge including transaction isolation levels, locking mechanisms, deadlock analysis, replication strategies (logical and physical), query optimization, EXPLAIN plan analysis, and performance tuning. Ability to diagnose and resolve database-level performance issues and consistency problems.

  • Monolith Decomposition Experience

    Hands-on experience splitting monolithic systems into microservices or building service-oriented architectures while maintaining system stability. Proven ability to maintain backward compatibility during architectural transitions, manage migration complexity, and execute incremental rollouts.

  • Observability and SLO Management

    Strong proficiency defining Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs), implementing monitoring and alerting strategies, and correlating metrics to customer impact. Experience with observability tools, distributed tracing, and incident response workflows. Ability to measure system health holistically and communicate technical health to non-technical stakeholders.

Education

  • Computer Science or Related Field

    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or equivalent professional experience demonstrating mastery of fundamental computer science concepts including algorithms, data structures, system design, and complexity analysis.

Experience

  • Infrastructure or Platform Team Tenure

    3+ years working on infrastructure, platform engineering, or internal tooling teams that serve multiple product engineering teams. Direct experience understanding platform consumer needs, building adoption, and measuring platform impact on engineering velocity.

  • Event-Driven Architecture at Scale

    Production experience building or operating event-driven systems at scale. Experience with tools like Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis Streams, or similar event infrastructure. Understanding of tradeoffs between different messaging patterns and ability to select appropriate solutions for specific constraints.

  • Change Data Capture or Logical Replication

    Practical experience implementing or operating CDC (Change Data Capture) systems or logical replication. Understanding of consistency models, replication lag, and eventual consistency patterns. Experience with tools like Debezium or PostgreSQL logical replication.

  • Regulated Industry Systems

    Background working with sensitive data (healthcare, payments, or financial systems) where data integrity, auditability, and compliance requirements are non-negotiable. Understanding of regulatory constraints and how they influence architectural decisions.

  • Technical Leadership and Influence

    Demonstrated ability to shape technical direction and influence other teams' engineering practices without direct authority. Experience writing architectural decision records, RFCs, or design documents that gained adoption across organizations.

Skills

Required

  • Python Backend Development

    Proficiency building backend systems in Python using frameworks like Flask or FastAPI. Ability to design clean APIs, handle concurrency, and optimize performance. Experience with SQLAlchemy or similar ORMs.

  • PostgreSQL and Relational Databases

    Advanced understanding of relational database design, SQL query optimization, transaction management, and PostgreSQL-specific features. Ability to architect databases for consistency and performance.

  • Event-Driven Architecture

    Expertise in designing and implementing event-driven systems including event sourcing, asynchronous messaging, event streaming, and eventual consistency patterns.

  • Distributed Systems Design

    Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts including consistency models, message delivery semantics, failure modes, retry strategies, and designing for resilience.

  • API Design and Integration

    Ability to design clean, maintainable APIs that evolve gracefully. Experience with API versioning, backward compatibility, and inter-service communication patterns.

  • System Monitoring and Observability

    Proficiency with observability tools like Datadog, Prometheus, or similar. Ability to design comprehensive monitoring strategies, define meaningful alerts, and create dashboards that surface system health.

Preferred

  • Async Python (asyncio, FastAPI)

    Nice to have

    Hands-on experience building async-first Python applications using asyncio or async frameworks. Understanding of async patterns, coroutines, and event loop mechanics.

  • Change Data Capture and CDC Tools

    Nice to have

    Experience with Change Data Capture systems like Debezium or PostgreSQL logical replication for streaming database changes to downstream systems.

  • Multi-Region and Data Residency Architecture

    Nice to have

    Experience designing systems that respect data residency requirements, handle multi-region deployments, and manage regulatory constraints around data location.

  • Redis and Distributed Caching

    Nice to have

    Proficiency with Redis including data structures, caching patterns, distributed locking, and stream processing capabilities.

  • Monolith-to-Microservices Migration

    Nice to have

    Direct experience leading or implementing migrations from monolithic architectures to service-oriented architectures while maintaining system stability and data consistency.

  • Healthcare or Regulated Industry Compliance

    Nice to have

    Background working with HIPAA, GDPR, or other healthcare/financial regulations and understanding how compliance requirements influence system architecture.

  • Open Source Contribution

    Nice to have

    Active contributions to open source projects, demonstrating ability to write high-quality, maintainable code and engage with technical communities.

  • Technical Documentation and Decision Records

    Nice to have

    Experience writing RFC (Request for Comments), architecture decision records (ADRs), design documents, or technical specifications that drive engineering decisions.

Tech stack

Languages

Python

Frameworks

FlaskFastAPISQLAlchemy

Databases

PostgreSQLRedis

Tools

DatadogAmazon S3RQ (Python Resque)Git and Monorepo

Other

Event Streaming ArchitectureLogical Replication and CDCDistributed TracingDaily Deployment

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·EUR 80,000 – 120,000

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Equity and Stock Options

    Competitive equity grants with meaningful ownership stake in Alan's growth trajectory as a European health technology leader.

  • Health and Wellness

    Comprehensive health insurance coverage including mental health support and telemedicine access through Alan's platform, plus wellness programs.

  • Professional Development

    Learning budget, conference attendance allowance, and training opportunities to develop skills in distributed systems, healthcare technology, and platform engineering.

  • Flexible Remote Work

    Remote work flexibility with opportunities for in-person collaboration at Alan offices in Paris, Brussels, or Madrid. Ability to work from France, Belgium, or Spain.

  • Work-Life Balance

    Generous paid time off, parental leave, and sabbatical programs supporting long-term career sustainability and personal well-being.

  • Inclusive Benefits

    Comprehensive benefits package supporting diverse backgrounds including parental leave, fertility support, and inclusive workplace policies.

  • Career Progression

    Clear career development framework with Senior (D level) and above positions available, enabling advancement based on technical depth and organizational impact.

  • Mission-Driven Work

    Direct impact on European healthcare accessibility through building systems that serve 1M+ members and enable preventative health as standard practice.

Full posting

Original listing.

Health can’t wait.

Not for symptoms to get worse. Not for a six‑month appointment. Not for a system to catch up. But that’s exactly how healthcare works today. You wait, until you can’t.

Alan exists to end the wait.

Health is a universal right, and we believe this right can only become real when it’s coupled with prevention. We need to stop treating health as something we repair and start treating it as something we build, every day. It’s not solely a question of willpower. It’s the healthcare system itself that needs to work for everyone, in a sustainable way.

So we are building the new standard in prevention insurance. Alan is the first company that integrates insurance, prevention, and care into a single, acclaimed user experience.

We are on an incredible journey to build a global leading company, with a unique culture. We already partner with 40K+ companies of all sizes, serving more than 1M+ members, and have reached €800M+ in ARR.

Prevention as the new norm. That's what we're building with our team of 1000+ people. If it speaks to you: we're hiring across France, Spain, Belgium, and Canada. And beyond.

🚀 What you'll build and who you'll work with

Every Alan product, in every country, runs on the same backend: events, queues, cache, data shared between components, transactions. More than 200 engineers build on it every day. It carries more than 1 million members today. It must carry 10 million, in more countries, with more regulated health data.

You would join Backend Platform, a new team in our engineering organisation. Our job is to rethink the backend of a fully grown company, while it keeps running. Today almost everything runs in one Python monolith on one database. We are moving it towards big services that scale on their own, one pilot at a time. We build the tools that make this possible, and we set the rules for how Alan builds backends.

This is a rare kind of project. The codebase serves real members and customers every day, and we have the mandate to change how it is built. What we decide now will shape how hundreds of engineers work for years. You will learn a lot, and your work will have a real impact.

The team is small and growing: 3 engineers today, 6 next year. Its mission:

Own the backend building blocks every Alan product depends on, and make them simple enough that product teams use them without needing us.

Your scope

  • The events pipeline. How our components and services talk to each other asynchronously: a Postgres outbox, Redis Streams, an S3 archive. It is in production for about 20 components. You make it a product that teams use on their own.

  • Data replication between services. A service publishes read-only tables. Other services keep a local, fresh copy and join on it. This replaces slow joins across components.

  • Towards big services. The tools to take capabilities out of the monolith: a service template, APIs between services, traces across services, dependency management. We start with a pilot and turn it into a playbook.

  • The shared runtime. Queues, cache, the transaction layer. Their limits, their SLOs, their headroom.

  • The backend direction. The rules for how we build backends at Alan, written with the other engineering teams.

🛠️ The stack

Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, Redis, RQ, Datadog, all in a monorepo. New services are async-first. We deploy daily and believe in distributed ownership: you build it, you own it. You don't need prior Python experience.

⭐ Is it you we're looking for?

Experience we value

  • 5+ years of backend engineering, with code other teams depend on: libraries, frameworks, pipelines, internal platforms. You ran it in production and owned it.

  • Distributed systems as a daily tool: events and messaging (delivery guarantees, ordering, idempotence, retries), data replication, consistency, transactions.

  • PostgreSQL in depth: transactions, locks, replication, query plans.

  • You have split a monolith or built services, step by step, while production kept running.

  • You measure before you optimise, and you set SLOs and alerts for what you own.

  • English working proficiency. French is not required.

Mindset we value

  • Product mindset. Product teams are your customers. Adoption is how you measure success.

  • Enabler. You build things others use on their own, instead of doing the work for them.

  • You write to think and align. Short framing docs and decision records are how this team works with the rest of engineering.

  • Influence without authority. You get other teams to change how they build, with no reporting line.

  • Incremental. One pilot first, then the playbook. No big-bang rewrites.

Strong plus: you worked in a platform team that served product teams · event-driven architecture at scale · CDC or logical replication · async Python (asyncio, FastAPI) · multi-region or data residency · health, payments or other regulated data.

Not required: frontend · Kubernetes and cluster operations · database administration · LLM or AI expertise. Other teams own those.

Mission alignment

  • Healthcare technology excites you.

  • Leveraging AI to redefine our roles and unlock scalability.

For this opportunity, we are aiming to hire at D level or above. These are senior individual-contributor seats. Your leverage comes from technical depth and from how many teams use what you build.

But above all, we are looking for high potential and curiosity: make sure to show us this when you apply! Everything else is a bonus.

🌍 How we work

  • Location: You must be legally eligible to work in France, Belgium, or Spain.

  • Remote work: We offer remote work flexibility, but we value in-person collaboration.

🎯 Important note: we hire people, not roles.

If you're excited about this opportunity but don't check every box, we'd love to hear from you. Everyone, no matter how underrepresented, should feel free to apply, as it can only bring learnings or success.


If you identify yourself as a woman: Did you know that research shows women often apply only when meeting 100% of requirements?
Remember, this is just a guide, not a checklist.
We'll be thrilled to receive your application!


🔖 Check out our About Alan and Career pages, as well as our Medium, blog and Glassdoor page for more info.

You want to know more about Alan?

  • 🙌 Perks & Benefits: Alaners are provided with a stimulating environment and perks ensuring they are happy, efficient and spend only high-quality time with co-workers.

  • 🤘 A strong culture: People joining Alan are often surprised and delighted by our innovative working method. We have a set of cultural values that guide our approach to work.

Redirects to Alan's application page.

Other roles

More at Alan.

View all 15 roles