Staff Backend Engineer

As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will be a highly technical individual contributor responsible for designing, building, and optimizing the backend systems that power our low-latency ad platform. You will take the lead in developing scalable microservices and streaming data infrastructure to handle high-throughput workloads with minimal latency. This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems and real-time data processing (ideally in the programmatic advertising domain) to ensure our systems remain highly performant and reliable. You’ll work closely with product managers, data scientists, and other engineering teams to translate business needs into technical solutions and ensure the platform is fast, fault‑tolerant, and observable. This role is based in the United States and can be performed remotely, with a preference for candidates who can join us in a hybrid capacity in San Francisco, New York, or Atlanta.

Responsibilities

• System Architecture & Development : Lead the design and implementation of scalable, high-performance backend services, including microservices and APIs, that can efficiently handle large volumes of requests with low latency. Ensure the architecture accommodates real-time bidding and personalization use cases common in AdTech.
• Streaming Data Infrastructure : Develop and maintain streaming data pipelines and event‑driven systems to process and analyze continuous data flows in real time (e.g., using Apache Kafka). Optimize data ingestion and processing for timeliness and accuracy to support downstream analytics and machine‑learning models.
• Performance & Reliability : Ensure the backend systems are highly performant, resilient, and stable under heavy load. Implement robust fault‑tolerance mechanisms and optimize for low‑latency response times in a high‑concurrency environment. Leverage observability best practices (comprehensive monitoring, logging, and tracing) to enable engineers to quickly analyze system behavior and take proactive measures to boost performance and reliability.
• Cross‑Functional Collaboration : Work closely with cross‑functional teams – including Product, Data Science, DevOps, and Frontend – to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions. Facilitate effective communication and collaborative problem‑solving to deliver new features and improvements that align with our product roadmap.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship : Provide technical leadership within the engineering team without direct managerial duties. Guide and mentor junior engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and best practice adoption, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Technical Strategy & Innovation : Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry trends (e.g. new AWS services, streaming frameworks, database technologies) and evaluate their potential benefit to our platform. Contribute to the technical roadmap, making build‑vs‑buy recommendations and driving innovation to keep our systems ahead of the curve.

Required Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications

Company Profile

Zeta Global is a NYSE listed data‑powered marketing technology company with a heritage of innovation and industry leadership. Founded in 2007 by entrepreneur David A. Steinberg and John Sculley, former CEO of Apple Inc and Pepsi‑Cola, the Company combines the industry’s 3rd largest proprietary data set (2.4B+ identities) with Artificial Intelligence to unlock consumer intent, personalize experiences and help our clients drive business growth.

Our technology runs on the Zeta Marketing Platform, which powers ‘end to end’ marketing programs for some of the world’s leading brands. With expertise encompassing all digital marketing channels – Email, Display, Social, Search and Mobile – Zeta orchestrates acquisition and engagement programs that deliver results that are scalable, repeatable and sustainable.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Zeta Global is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, ancestry, color, religion, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, medical condition, disability, veterans status, or any other basis protected by law.

We are committed to building diverse teams with different identities, backgrounds and perspectives. We believe in providing a forum to connect at Zeta, to learn and celebrate differences. Our mission is to ensure we have an environment that enables a deep level of trust and belonging, so everyone feels invited to bring their whole selves to work, and to increase both diversity at Zeta as well as in the technology industry.

Zeta considers applicants for employment without regard to, and does not discriminate on the basis of an individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, status as a veteran, or national or ethnic origin, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state or local law; nor does Zeta discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

Interested in building your career at Zeta Global? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

#J-18808-Ljbffr