Principal Software Engineer (Activate - Bidding Platform)

• Architect, design, and build high-throughput, ultra-low-latency real-time bidding systems for buy-side advertising platforms.
• Lead development of bidder services handling millions of QPS with strict latency and reliability SLAs using Golang/C/C++.
• Design and implement campaign pacing, budget management, and delivery optimization algorithms across multiple objectives (CPA, ROAS, CTR, CVR).
• Own core systems for deal execution, auction participation, bid shading, and supply path optimization.
• Build and evolve real-time and near-real-time data pipelines for impressions, clicks, conversions, and attribution using Kafka, Flink, or Spark.
• Collaborate closely with ML engineers to productionize models such as bid optimization, contextual bandits, reach forecasting, and incrementality models.
• Integrate and maintain support for programmatic advertising protocols (OpenRTB, VAST, CTV-specific standards).
• Drive architectural decisions around scalability, fault tolerance, data consistency, and latency optimization.
• Ensure data quality, governance, privacy, and compliance across the performance advertising stack.
• Conduct deep performance profiling, latency tuning, and debugging of distributed systems in production.
• Mentor engineers, set coding and design standards, and lead technical reviews across teams.
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies, auction strategies, and optimization frameworks to keep the platform competitive.

• Should have a bachelor’s degree in engineering (CS / IT) or equivalent degree from well-known Institutes / Universities.

Additional Information

Return to Office: PubMatic employees throughout the globe have returned to our offices via a hybrid work schedule (3 days “in office” and 2 days “working remotely”) that is intended to maximize collaboration, innovation, and productivity among teams and across functions.

Benefits: Our benefits package includes the best of what leading organizations provide such as, paid leave programs, paid holidays, healthcare, dental and vision insurance, disability and life insurance, commuter benefits, physical and financial wellness programs, unlimited DTO in the US (that we actually require you to use!), reimbursement for mobile and fully stocked pantries plus in-office catered lunches 5 days per week.

• Eight plus years of software engineering experience, with significant depth in ad tech / performance advertising/Building DSP bidder (Buy side).
• Strong hands-on experience with Golang in building low-latency, high-scale backend systems.
• Proven experience designing and operating real-time bidding platforms, bidders, or ad serving systems.
• Deep understanding of campaign pacing, budget allocation, and performance optimization algorithms.
• Experience with streaming and distributed systems (Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming).
• Strong familiarity with OpenRTB, VAST, and programmatic advertising workflows.
• Solid knowledge of SQL,PostgreSQL and large-scale analytics platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, or similar).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and distributed system design.
• Experience working cross-functionally with product, data science, analytics, and ML teams.
• Demonstrated ability to own systems end-to-end, influence architecture, and deliver at scale.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to drive technical direction and mentor others.

AI-Enabled Engineering Mindset We value engineers who actively leverage Generative AI tools and IDEs (e.g. GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Windsurf etc.) to accelerate development, improve code quality, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance documentation and debugging workflows. Engineers who demonstrate AI-first thinking using these tools to drive faster experimentation, ideation, and technical execution will thrive in our high-scale, performance-critical environment.

PubMatic is one of the world’s leading scaled digital advertising platforms, offering more transparent advertising solutions to publishers, media buyers, commerce companies and data owners, allowing them to harness the power and potential of the open internet to drive better business outcomes.

Founded in 2006 with the vision that data-driven decisioning would be the future of digital advertising, we enable content creators to run a more profitable advertising business, which in turn allows them to invest back into the multi-screen and multi-format content that consumers demand.