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Jobs · Engineering · New York

Staff Software Engineer (Backend)

Kargo · New York, NY · 3 days ago
On-siteEngineering$180k–$230k/yrFull-time

Who We Are

Kargo creates powerful moments of connection between brands and consumers to build businesses. Every day, our 600+ employees work to radically raise the bar on what agentic AI, CTV, eCommerce, social, and mobile can do to deliver unique ad experiences across the world's most premium platforms. Taking a creative science approach to all we do, we continuously innovate solutions that outperform industry benchmarks and client expectations. Now 20+ years strong, Kargo has offices in NYC, Chicago, LA, Dallas, Sydney, Auckland, London, and Waterford, Ireland.

Mission

The Staff Software Engineer owns technical direction across backend services and shared platform capabilities, translating ambiguous business needs into durable architecture and reliable execution. Without this role, complexity compounds silently and engineering teams lose the leverage they need to ship with confidence.

Outcomes — What Success Looks Like in 6–12 Months

  • Architecture is driving alignment, not slowing it down.
  • Service boundaries, interfaces, and design patterns are clearly defined across multiple systems, and teams reference shared standards rather than solving the same problems independently.
  • Major initiatives ship with operational integrity.
  • Platform health is measurably improved.
  • Structural weaknesses are identified and addressed — whether through targeted refactors, new reference implementations, or infrastructure investments — and the impact is visible in reliability or performance metrics.
  • Engineering effectiveness goes up across teams.
  • Tooling improvements, testing strategy, and documentation contributions reduce friction in the development cycle, and other engineers can point to concrete ways this role made their work easier.
  • Senior engineers are growing into broader ownership.

Skills — Core Technical Capabilities Required

  • Deep proficiency in Go (or comparable systems/compiled language) with production experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems
  • Strong systems design fundamentals: APIs, service architecture, concurrency, data modeling, fault tolerance, and performance
  • Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS in production environments
  • Operational instincts across monitoring, debugging, incident response, and systemic follow-through
  • Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-team technical initiatives from problem definition through production rollout
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders

Preferred

  • Familiarity with RTB, SSP, or auction systems — or other performance-sensitive distributed platforms where latency, throughput, and cost must be actively balanced
  • Experience building shared internal platforms or frameworks adopted across multiple engineering teams

Competencies — Behaviors We Like to See

  • Takes loosely defined product or business problems and produces clear, actionable technical plans without waiting for full clarity
  • Knows when to move fast, when to invest, and when to hold — and can articulate the reasoning to engineers and stakeholders alike
  • Leads design reviews and technical discussions that bring teams to strong decisions without relying on formal authority or slowing down momentum
  • Establishes reusable patterns and reference implementations that other engineers actually adopt because they're genuinely useful
  • Operates With Production Discipline
  • Treats observability, incident management, and post-launch iteration as first-class parts of the engineering process, not afterthoughts
  • Identifies systemic risk early and makes sound calls on whether to patch, refactor, or redesign
  • Grows the People Around Them
  • Actively invests in the development of senior engineers, helping them take on broader technical ownership and influence
  • Stays close enough to the code to lead by example and make high-leverage contributions when it counts

Pay

U.S. Salary Range $180,000—$230,000 USD

Our Laurels

  • AdAge Best Places to Work
  • ThinkLA Partner of the Year
  • Built In Best Places to Work
  • Cynopsis 2025 Top Women in Media - Jeannine Shao Collins
  • Martech Breakthrough Awards - Best Overall Adtech Company
  • Digiday Media Awards Best Event
  • Cynopsis Media Impact Awards-Best CTV Platform
  • Martech Breakthrough Awards-CTV Innovation
  • Adweek Media Plan of the Year Awards - Best Use of Insights

Big Picture

kargo.com

@kargomobile and LinkedIn (Kargo)

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace where all employees and applicants are treated with respect and dignity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnic origin, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or family status, national origin, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local, state, or federal law. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.

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