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FreeWheel’s Programmatic Demand team is looking for a Principal Engineer to help define and build the next evolution of our DSP-as-a-service platform that powers FreeWheel DSP, FreeWheel Buyer Cloud, and products like Universal Ads. Over the next 3–5 years, backend and platform engineering in ad tech will be reshaped by: Agentic software that can reason over business context, execute workflows, and safely interact with production systems. Model Context Protocol (MCP) and tool-based architectures that standardize how services expose capabilities to agents. New expectations around observability, governance, safety, and cost controls for AI-driven systems. This role is for a hands-on principal engineer who can set technical direction, deliver core systems, and establish the patterns we will reuse across Buyer Cloud and our broader Demand platform as we build and deploy our first MCP server.
Job Responsibility:
Collaborates with project stakeholders to identify product and technical requirements
Designs and oversees new software and web applications
Trains and mentors software engineers
Oversees the researching, writing, and editing of documentation and technical requirements
Keeps current with technological developments within the industry
Provides technical leadership throughout the design process
Assists in tracking and provides performance metrics
Works with Quality Assurance team
Leads project planning, resourcing, requirement analyzing and defining
Presents and defends architectural, design and technical choices
Define the technical vision for Buyer Cloud’s next-generation backend
Lead architecture and design for large-scale, distributed systems
Establish durable platform patterns
Design and implement systems that allow AI agents to safely take actions
Partner with data, ML, and product stakeholders
Raise the bar on SLO-driven reliability and operational practices
Champion best-in-class observability
Drive performance engineering across critical paths
Mentor and grow senior engineers
Set and model expectations for design docs, decision logs, code review quality
Requirements:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
15+ years building and operating scalable, distributed systems
ad tech / media / programmatic experience strongly preferred
Deep expertise in system design and technical architecture, including ownership of complex systems in production
Strong coding ability in one or more of: Python, Java, Go, C++ (performance, concurrency, and distributed computing)
Experience building and operating cloud-native services on AWS (or equivalent) including infrastructure-as-code
Demonstrated ability to own and manage technical backlogs, influence prioritization, and drive execution across multiple teams
AI / Agentic Systems Experience (Strongly Preferred)
Experience designing “tooling” APIs intended for automation (human and machine clients)
Familiarity with modern AI/agent patterns (tool calling, RAG, evaluation/monitoring)
Experience (or strong interest) in standards and ecosystems like MCP
15+ years of experience as a hands-on software engineer
Experience in the media or advertising technology industry is a must-have
Proven expertise in technical architecture and system design
Advanced proficiency in object-oriented and systems programming languages such as C++, Java, Python, or Go
Experience deploying and operating applications in public cloud environments (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure)
Comfortable using engineering productivity tools such as Jira, Confluence, Git, and Microsoft Office Suite
Nice to have:
AI / Agentic Systems Experience
Experience designing “tooling” APIs intended for automation
Familiarity with modern AI/agent patterns
Experience (or strong interest) in standards and ecosystems like MCP