Staff Software Engineer

Role Description

We're hiring multiple Staff Engineers to join a small, high-performance group supporting the engineering organizations behind Sailthru, LiveIntent, and WhatCounts — the three platforms that make up Zeta Actions, a business unit within Zeta Global. This is a deeply technical IC role. You'll spend most of your time in the code, the architecture, and the hard problems these teams run into as they build and operate platforms that serve brands and publishers at massive scale.

Staff Engineers engage with teams in a few different ways:

• As a technical partner on complex projects
• As a hands-on contributor to high-priority initiatives
• As an on-demand expert for teams that hit an architectural wall

The common thread is that you're someone teams want in the room when things get hard.

Qualifications

• Deep, battle-tested expertise in AWS and cloud-native architecture
• Strong JVM fundamentals, primarily Java and Kotlin
• Hands-on Kubernetes experience
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems
• Comfort working with large databases at scale
• Practical experience with AI/ML engineering
• A track record of delivering large, complex initiatives in ambiguous environments
• Strong debugging instincts and a bias toward root-cause analysis
• The judgment to know when to push for the right solution and when pragmatism wins
• Fluency with AI-driven development tools
• Comfort operating without a playbook
• Comfort working in and around legacy codebases
• The ability to quickly map an existing architecture
• You think big and envision meaningfully better outcomes
• Bias for action
• Experience with PHP or Python is a plus

Requirements

• Identify systemic engineering challenges across our platforms and drive their resolution
• Propose and validate technical approaches for problems involving scale, performance, security, or cross-team dependencies
• Lead architectural decisions for complex, ambiguous, or high-risk initiatives
• Write code, review PRs, debug production issues, and optimize system performance
• Dive deep into our AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes workloads, and JVM-based services
• Participate in our on-call rotation as a second-level escalation point for complex engineering incidents
• Champion operational excellence across our engineering teams
• Partner with engineering teams as a technical point of contact on complex projects
• Work directly with Engineering Managers to align technical work with team and product priorities
• Mentor engineers across our teams
• Stay close to the customer and understand how Sailthru's platform affects users
• Partner closely with the product team

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO
• Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Employee Equity and Stock Purchase Plan
• Employee Discounts, Virtual Wellness Classes, and Pet Insurance
• And more!!