Principal Software Engineer

About Sovrn

Every interesting company solves important problems for other people. Sovrn is a Software and Data business that helps Open Web businesses be and remain independent. We help them understand their business better, operate more efficiently, and make keep more money.

We believe in the freedom and free-flow of information.

We believe the Open Web is the largest source of this information.

We believe in helping Open Web businesses be and remain Independent.

Through Software products and Data solutions we help our customers:

Understand their business better , so they can make better decisions

Operate their business more efficiently, so they can invest in what matters most

Make (and Keep) more money , so they control their own destiny

About the Role

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer with deep roots in adtech infrastructure and a genuine conviction about what AI-native engineering looks like in practice. This role is backend-focused at its core — you'll work on the systems that power our exchange, from bid request processing and traffic shaping to data pipelines and auction logic. But we're also at an inflection point in how we build software, and we want this person to help lead us through it.

From a generative/agentic AI capabilities standpoint, we already use LLMs and agentic tooling across our data stack and, we’re looking for is someone who can help us take that from general adoption to intentional practice — who has strong opinions about where AI creates real leverage in a high-throughput adtech environment, and who can bring the rest of the engineering organization along with them.

Languages/components/tools in our stack: Java, Kafka (Redpanda), AWS, Databricks, Datadog, ONNX.

What you'll be doing:

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

A successful candidate will have:

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

Location: Sovrn offices are located in Boulder, CO and New York, NY. We believe collaboration and shared purpose lead to deeper relationships, more creative problem-solving, and more learning, faster. For employees located near one of our offices, working in-person is our default. We trust people to use personal agency when focused work or life circumstances call for flexibility.. For exceptional candidates we would consider remote locations in these states: AZ, CA, CO, GA, MD, MA, MI, MO, NJ, NY, NC, OK, TX, UT, WA. #LI-Hybrid #LI-Remote

We understand that no candidate is perfectly qualified for any job. Experience comes in different forms; many skills are transferable; and passion goes a long way. Even more important than your resume is a clear demonstration of accountability and the ability to thrive in a fluid and collaborative environment. We expect you to learn new things in this role and encourage you to apply if your experience is close to what we’re looking for.

Sovrn Core Values: Candid, Customer Empathy, Learning, Scrappy, Second Order Thinking

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