Principal Software Engineer leading architecture and hands-on development for Swiftly’s multi-tenant ads and martech platform. Responsibilities include designing distributed systems, migrating legacy services without downtime, optimizing a low-latency Go ad server, defining database and service contracts, integrating ad-tech platforms, operating Azure production services, and setting engineering quality standards across testing, observability, CI/CD, security, and infrastructure.
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.
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.
Position Summary:
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. 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. 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.
Responsibilities Include:
- 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
Required Qualifications:
- 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
- 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
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with retail-oriented solutions and Saas
- Mix of startup and large software company experience
#LI-Remote
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.
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.
Similar Jobs
Cloud • Information Technology • Productivity • Security • Software • App development • Automation
Provides organization-wide technical leadership for Atlassian’s Dev AI platforms and autonomous developer initiatives. Defines multi-year architectures for agent runtimes, orchestration engines, execution sandboxes, memory systems, and context retrieval. Drives distributed-system architecture, reliability, security, responsible AI governance, evaluation, and operational standards. Leads cross-organizational technical initiatives, resolves architectural ambiguity, mentors senior engineers, partners with product and engineering leaders, and remains hands-on with strategic prototypes and architectural validation.
Top Skills:
Agent OrchestrationAi Evaluation FrameworksArtificial IntelligenceAtlassian Teamwork GraphAutonomous Ai AgentsBitbucketCode IntelligenceCode SynthesisDistributed SystemsJIRAResponsible AiRetrieval SystemsRuntime SandboxesSemantic SearchTelemetry
Cloud • Information Technology • Productivity • Security • Software • App development • Automation
Principal Software Engineer responsible for owning customer-facing products end to end, leading technical strategy, architecting large-scale distributed systems, and delivering AI-native experiences. The role involves full-stack implementation, product strategy, system design, code reviews, reliability, testing, telemetry, security, performance, and mentoring engineers. Candidates must have extensive experience building and operating large-scale systems and strong product, UX, communication, and collaboration skills.
Top Skills:
Automated TestingDistributed SystemsProduction Telemetry
Enterprise Web • Mobile • Professional Services • Software
Lead the mobile engineering team in evolving iOS and Android applications toward an AI-native, thin-client architecture. Define participant API and platform direction, contribute Python to backend services, establish AI-assisted development processes, improve DevOps and continuous delivery, mentor engineers, and partner closely with Product and Design. The role requires principal-level technical leadership, product focus, system architecture expertise, and hands-on use of AI coding agents.
Top Skills:
Ci/CdClaude CodeCloud Saas ArchitectureCodexCursorDevOpsDistributed TracingElixirHitrustKotlinObservabilityPythonReactSoc 2Swift
What you need to know about the Colorado Tech Scene
With a business-friendly climate and research universities like CU Boulder and Colorado State, Colorado has made a name for itself as a startup ecosystem. The state boasts a skilled workforce and high quality of life thanks to its affordable housing, vibrant cultural scene and unparalleled opportunities for outdoor recreation. Colorado is also home to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, helping cement its status as a hub for renewable energy innovation.
Key Facts About Colorado Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 260,000; 8.5% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Lockheed Martin, Century Link, Comcast, BAE Systems, Level 3
- Key Industries: Software, artificial intelligence, aerospace, e-commerce, fintech, healthtech
- Funding Landscape: $4.9 billion in VC funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Access Venture Partners, Ridgeline Ventures, Techstars, Blackhorn Ventures
- Research Centers and Universities: Colorado School of Mines, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Denver, Colorado State University, Mesa Laboratory, Space Science Institute, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Gottlieb Institute
