S- Work from
- United States
- Contract
- Full-time
- Experience
- Lead
- Salary
- $220K – $228K / year
- Posted
- 11 November 2026
- Apply by
- 10 January 2027
Swiftly is searching for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the architecture of our ads and martech platform: the systems that author retail media campaigns, generate creatives and serve ads to shoppers through The Trade Desk. This role will set technical direction across these teams, lead a tenant-by-tenant migration off legacy services without downtime, and stay hands-on in the hardest code.
Trusted by leading retailers, wholesalers, and hundreds of iconic brands, Swiftly unifies data across the retail ecosystem to accelerate growth and power the connected, personalized experiences that drive lasting shopper loyalty.
About the role
The platform spans a Go ad server built for low-latency bid requests, Python services on Azure Functions for campaign authoring and tenant configuration, Kotlin/Quarkus services we are carving apart, and a shared PostgreSQL schema managed as code.
Responsibilities
Work with and provide direction to the teams that build Swiftly's ads and martech platform, including the Go ad server, campaign authoring, the tenant and capability registry, creative generation and personalized-ad services
Architect, code and maintain large scale distributed systems with complex requirements
Lead the incremental migration of campaign authoring and The Trade Desk write path off a Kotlin/Quarkus service, one retailer at a time, using per-tenant ownership switches, database write guards and shadow-diff dry runs to cut over safely
Own the performance and reliability of the Go ad server against strict SLOs (p50 at or under 40 ms, p99 at or under 1 s, 2 s hard deadline), using in-process caching, circuit breakers, connection pooling and profiling
Design the data contracts shared between services: declarative schema-as-code with Atlas, versioned database views as serving contracts, and transactional outbox and projector patterns for side effects
Partner with data engineering on Databricks pipelines for personalized rankings, identity resolution and the impression data that feeds attribution and iROAS
Build safe, auditable integrations with The Trade Desk GraphQL API, Salesforce and creative-rendering services, with idempotent, lock-protected pushes and full write audit history
Utilize expertise with microservices architecture and database design
Operate production services, including on-call and incident management
Contribute to a multi-tenant platform architecture
Guide the platform from AKS with ArgoCD and Kustomize toward Azure Container Apps and Azure Functions, with runtime configuration in Azure App Configuration and identity through Entra ID and Key Vault
Set the engineering quality bar: strict typing and linting, unit, integration and end-to-end tests with Testcontainers, CodeQL and dependency scanning, release automation in GitHub Actions, and AI-assisted development
Working collaboratively in an ambiguous, fast-paced environment
Take ownership of domain from the ground up, from architectural decisions to coding to testing to operations
Other related duties as assigned
Requirements
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics or a related field or comparable industry experience
10+ years of industry experience designing, building, and maintaining large-scale software services, ideally in a multi-tenant environment
Confidence writing production code in Go and Python, and working in Kotlin or Java services
Expertise with PostgreSQL (query performance, migrations, views), Kubernetes, event streaming such as Azure Event Hubs or Kafka, and API frameworks such as FastAPI or Quarkus
Experience building and running services on Azure and/or AWS
Experience building low-latency, high-throughput services against defined SLOs, with observability through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Loki, Pyroscope and Grafana
Experience with CI/CD in GitHub Actions, GitOps deployment and infrastructure as code such as Terraform
Ad tech experience: ad servers, DSPs such as The Trade Desk, impression tracking, and campaign measurement or attribution
Experience with Databricks or Spark data pipelines
Experience with Atlas schema migrations, SQLAlchemy/SQLModel or pgx, and Azure Functions or Container Apps
Experience using AI coding agents in daily development
Nice to have
Experience with retail-oriented solutions and Saas
Mix of startup and large software company experience
Eligibility
- This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.
- Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for current or future sponsorship
- Note: This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.
- Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for current or future sponsorship.
About Swiftly
Swiftly is the AI platform purpose-built for retail, serving retailers, wholesalers, and brands. Swiftly's AI agents unify data, automate workflows, and power the marketing that drives measurable business growth. Swiftly AI is built on the industry's largest proprietary retail dataset: live transactions, 9 million products, and the closed-loop campaign outcomes of 33,000 stores.
Working For Swiftly
We are working on a set of problems that require the best in the industry to get right. Our employees are the pillars of the future of the company and they are treated and compensated as such. We're a growing team of experienced industry professionals building an organization that can solve tough problems and values a collaborative environment.
Every Swiftly employee
-Has demonstrated the ability to work collaboratively in an ambiguous, fast-paced environment
-Takes ownership of their domain from the ground up, from inception through deployment to customers
-Leaves their ego at the door and ensures the best idea leaves the room
-Is always experimenting with new technologies and learning new skillsets
If you've ever wanted to work on a project that blends a gorgeous consumer experience, sophisticated logistics, and scale that rivals the largest technology players, Swiftly is the place for you.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Swiftly is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.
Swiftly will make reasonable accommodations in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified individuals with disabilities throughout the subsequent application process.
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