Job Description: Strategic Imperative The Principal Engineer (Java focus) accelerates Prodege’s ability to scale by defining and driving high-leverage architecture for Scala/Java systems that must be fast, stable, and resilient. This role reduces long-term technical risk, improves platform reliability and developer velocity, and aligns multiple teams around practical standards and patterns—turning strategic direction into durable engineering outcomes. Prodege: A cutting-edge marketing and consumer insights platform, Prodege has charted a course of innovation in the evolving technology landscape by helping leading brands, marketers, and agencies uncover the answers to their business questions, acquire new customers, increase revenue, and drive brand loyalty & product adoption. Bolstered by a major investment by Great Hill Partners in Q4 2021 and strategic acquisitions of Pollfish, BitBurst & AdGate Media in 2022, Prodege looks forward to more growth and innovation to empower our partners to gather meaningful, rich insights and better market to their target audiences. As an organization, we go the extra mile to “Create Rewarding Moments” every day for our partners, consumers, and team. Come join us today! Primary Objectives: - Own Technical Strategy and Architecture for a Core Domain - Drive Cross-Team Delivery of High-Impact Initiatives - Raise Reliability, Resiliency, and Performance at Scale - Standardize Platform Patterns, Tooling, and Engineering Excellence - Strengthen Security, Governance, and Operational Maturity - Mentor and Multiply Engineering Effectiveness Across the Org Qualifications - To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each job duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Detailed Job Duties: (typical monthly, weekly, daily tasks which support the primary objectives) - Own Technical Strategy and Architecture for a Core Domain - Define target architecture and reference patterns for Scala/Java services in a key domain (e.g., core APIs, monetization/yield services, identity/entitlements, data capture/streaming, experimentation). - Create architectural decision records (ADRs), standards, and guidelines that enable teams to scale safely. - Evaluate tradeoffs (build vs buy, monolith vs services, sync vs async) and guide decisions with measurable outcomes. ​ - Drive Cross-Team Delivery of High-Impact Initiatives - Lead design and execution for complex initiatives spanning multiple teams and systems (roadmap alignment, technical sequencing, dependency management). - Partner with Product/Engineering leadership to shape scope, timelines, and risk mitigation plans. - Unblock teams by resolving deep technical constraints and providing clear integration paths. ​ - Raise Reliability, Resiliency, and Performance at Scale - Identify systemic reliability risks and implement durable fixes (architecture changes, runtime safeguards, capacity strategies). - Drive performance and scalability programs (SLOs/SLAs, load testing, latency budgets, capacity planning). - Establish incident learnings into repeatable improvements (runbooks, automation, error budgets, resiliency patterns). ​ - Standardize Platform Patterns, Tooling, and Engineering Excellence - Create reusable frameworks, service templates, and libraries to reduce cognitive load and improve consistency. - Improve engineering productivity by streamlining CI/CD, test strategy, and developer workflows in partnership with platform teams. - Set code quality and review standards; raise the bar on observability and maintainability across teams. ​ - Strengthen Security, Governance, and Operational Maturity - Embed secure-by-design principles into architecture and team practices (data handling, access patterns, secrets, dependency hygiene). - Partner with Security/Compliance to meet governance needs with minimal delivery friction. - Ensure operational readiness for critical changes (release strategies, rollback plans, monitoring/alerting completeness). ​ - Mentor and Multiply Engineering Effectiveness Across the Org - Mentor Senior Engineers and Tech Leads through technical coaching, design reviews, and architecture forums. - Lead knowledge sharing: brown bags, documentation, best practices, and reference implementations. - Influence engineering culture through pragmatic standards, clarity, and high ownership. ​ - Cross-Functional Collaboration - Participate in cross-functional and business-critical meetings, initiatives, and relationship-building activities, including occasional international travel of approximately 5%–10% as required. MUST Haves: (ex: required skills, education, experience, certifications, licenses) - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience. - Ten or more (10+) years of software engineering experience with significant backend/distributed systems ownership. - Deep expertise building large-scale backend systems using one or more core languages relevant to Prodege’s environment, such as Scala, Java, PHP, or Golang, including service architecture, runtime behavior, and performance tuning. - Deep experience leading the design and scaling of AI-enabled systems across teams—e.g., defining architecture for LLM/ML platform integration, evaluation and quality frameworks, safety/guardrails, and reliability/cost controls—plus a track record of guiding standards and patterns that enable multiple teams to deliver AI features predictably in production. - Demonstrated ability to lead multi-team technical initiatives and influence roadmap decisions through strong technical judgment. - Strong track record of operational ownership for critical systems (incident management, postmortems, reliability improvements).Deep production experience in Scala and Java for high-scale backend systems. - Proven architecture leadership across multiple services/systems and teams. - Expertise in distributed systems, reliability engineering, and performance optimization. - Strong operational ownership: observability, incident response, postmortems, and long-term remediation. - Ability to influence without authority through technical clarity, collaboration, and strong communication. - Must be able to accommodate occasional international travel (approximately 5%–10%) in support of the role. Nice to Haves - Experience with large-scale streaming/event systems and data pipelines. - Experience building internal platforms or shared frameworks used by multiple teams. - Experience with Kubernetes, service meshes, and cloud cost/performance optimization. - Background in ad-tech, offer/rewards ecosystems, fraud/risk systems, or experimentation at scale. Pay Transparency: The anticipated base salary range for this position is $190,000 to $250,000. The final salary offered to a successful candidate will be dependent on several factors that may include, but are not limited to; the type and length of experience within the job, type and length of experience within the industry, the type and length of knowledge and skills for the position, education, training, etc. Prodege is a multi-state employer and final compensation within this range could be impacted by work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Prodege Benefits: Prodege offers a comprehensive benefits package to US Full-time employees including medical, dental, vision, STD, LTD and basic life insurance. Employees receive flexible PTO, as well as paid sick leave prorated based on hire date. US Employees have eight paid holidays throughout the calendar year. Employees receive an option to purchase shares of Company stock commensurate with their position, which vests over four years. Equal Employment Opportunity Statement At Prodege, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage individuals of all backgrounds to apply. FCIHO Employers will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of FCIHO.