Principal Software Engineer

About Cardlytics
Remember that time you got cash back on a cup of coffee through your banking app? That was us!

Cardlytics (NASDAQ: CDLX) is the industry-leading purchase intelligence and incentives platform. We are a product-driven company that cares about three things: our people, our customers, and our partners. Together, we make commerce more rewarding for everyone by helping businesses attract, understand, and incentivize consumers through their banks’ digital channels.

About the Team:

The Marketplace Ad Serving team is a crucial part of Cardlytics' technology infrastructure and business, responsible for powering the core platform—the Ads-Decisioning Engine (ADE). As the backbone of Cardlytics' advertising efforts, our mission is to build and maintain highly resilient, reliable serving systems that support 160 million monthly active users across 11 major U.S. banks and globally. We drive innovation throughout the ad-serving ecosystem using a modern, cloud-native, highly distributed AWS technology stack alongside other cutting-edge technologies. Our goal is to seamlessly accommodate our business’s exponential growth and ensure its long-term success.

About the Position:

As a Principal Software Engineer on the Marketplace Ad Serving team, you will play a pivotal role in the design and enhancement of the next-generation platform powering the Cardlytics Marketplace. This position offers extensive opportunities to work with advanced AWS technologies and collaborate with our Machine Learning scientists and engineers. You will work deeply with data orchestration, leveraging insights to drive impactful results as we navigate rapid growth. In this dynamic environment, you will help redefine ad delivery and optimize user engagement at scale, influencing millions of customers daily.
Cardlytics is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join our team, reporting to the Director of Engineering.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and architecture of robust, scalable software systems supporting Marketplace Ad Serving.

• Serve as a Technical Leader, driving engineering projects and collaborating closely with technical leads, product managers, sales teams, and cross-functional engineering teams to deliver solutions aligned with strategic business objectives.

• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to gather and translate product and engineering requirements into technical specifications and actionable engineering plans.

• Implement and enhance the Marketplace Ad Serving platform to scale with the growing needs of the business.

• Own the full lifecycle of production deployments and adhering to best practices for CI/CD.

• Influence the technical direction of the team through data-driven experimentation and best engineering practices, driving innovation and iteration of the technology stack.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical/STEM field.

• 8+ years of experience in software development.

• Hands-on experience with Go, Python or Java.

• Hands-on experience with AWS services such as Lambda, SQS, Glue, RDS, DynamoDB, Kafka, MSK, EMR, and EKS.

• Proficiency in SQL/NoSQL databases and big data processing frameworks (Spark), along with data management architectures (Hudi).

• Strong experience in distributed systems, microservices, web applications, and database management.

• Proven ability to design and build highly scalable, low-latency ad-serving platforms, particularly within the advertising industry.

• Experience in developing big data systems with open-source frameworks and tools like Apache Spark, Apache Hudi, and Apache Airflow, with proficiency in PySpark.

• Experience in designing, developing, and maintaining large-scale parallel applications.

• Proficiency in using software development tools/IDEs, testing methodologies, and documentation best practices.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in the advertising technology industry or related fields.

• Knowledge or experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, MLOps systems is a plus.

• Experience with C#/.NET is a plus.

Technical Environment

We primarily use macOS and Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides). While our preferred platform is macOS, we support both macOS and Windows. Familiarity with or willingness to work within this environment is required.

Core Values

Our shared values are the driving force behind everything we do. Across all roles, we are looking for teammates who embody these values:

• Customer and partner-first

• Act with urgency and focus

• Integrity with our partners and data

• Accountability even when challenged

• Empowerment over hierarchy

• Growth over comfort

Benefits and Perks

• Flexible paid time off plus company holidays

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance begins on your first day

• 401(k) retirement plan with company match, plan also includes a student loan debt repayment option

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

• Educational assistance for continuing education

• Lifestyle Spending Account for physical, emotional, and financial wellness (like gym memberships, home down payments, art classes, park passes, and more!)

• Complementary Calm app subscriptions to support employee mental health and wellbeing

As an equal opportunity employer, Cardlytics is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our people bring our products and organization to life, and every unique perspective makes us better. If you can do the job and you’re excited about growing with us as we scale our best-in-class advertising platform, we’d love to hear from you. If you need accommodation in the recruiting process due to a disability, please email recruiting@cardlytics.com or inform your recruiter.