[Remote] Principal Software Engineer Boulder, Colorado or New York City, New York or Remote
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Sovrn is a Software and Data business that helps Open Web businesses be and remain independent. They are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and evolution of backend systems, focusing on adtech infrastructure and AI-native engineering practices.
Responsibilities
- Own the design and evolution of backend systems that operate at exchange scale — high throughput, low latency, always on
- Lead architectural decisions across auction infrastructure, bid processing, traffic shaping, and supply-side integrations
- Establish and champion AI engineering practices across the team — from prompt engineering and RAG patterns to agentic workflow design and LLM evaluation
- Identify high-leverage opportunities to apply AI in our adtech stack: traffic scoring and filtering, bid shading, yield optimization, anomaly detection, and automated decisioning
- Set standards for how we evaluate, trust, and operate AI-powered systems in production — including observability, fallback behavior, and model governance
- Drive technical standards, design reviews, and engineering best practices across a senior team
- Partner with product, data science, and platform teams to ship end-to-end
- Help the broader engineering team build fluency and confidence with AI tooling, not just tolerance of it
- Mentor and level up engineers through code review, design collaboration, and hands-on guidance
Skills
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong backend track record
- 5+ years working specifically in adtech infrastructure — SSP, DSP, exchange, or ad server environments
- Deep fluency in the programmatic ecosystem: OpenRTB, bid request/response flows, auction mechanics, supply path optimization, or similar
- Experience building and operating systems at exchange scale — high QPS, strict latency budgets, fault tolerance
- Demonstrated experience leading AI or agentic engineering efforts in production environments — not just experimentation, but shipped, operated, and iterated on
- Hands-on experience with LLM integration patterns: RAG, tool use, multi-step agentic workflows, prompt engineering, and evaluation frameworks
- Strong distributed systems fundamentals: messaging, caching, service architecture, observability
- Comfort driving technical decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
- A point of view on where AI is and isn't the right tool — and the credibility to make that case
Benefits
- Bonus
- Equity
- Competitive salaries
- Stock options
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Short and long-term disability
- Life insurance
- 11 paid holidays
- Flexible vacation
- Commuter benefits
- A 401(k) plan and match
- A paid parental leave program
Company Overview