Principal Engineer, ML

Principal Engineer Ads Serving & ML Platform

We exist to wow our customers. We know were doing the right thing when we hear our

customers say How did we ever live without Coupang Born out of an obsession to make shopping eating and living easier than ever were collectively disrupting the multi-billion- dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce.

We are proud to have the best of both worlds a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurial surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact.

At Coupang you will see yourself your colleagues your team and the company grow every day

Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of whats possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on high-tech and hyper-connected world.

About the Role

Coupang is seeking a Principal Engineer to define and lead the technical vision for our Ads Serving & ML Platform one of the companys most critical business systems powered by large-scale machine learning and AI. Advertising plays a vital role in Coupangs ecosystem enabling customers to discover relevant products while helping advertisers grow their businesses. The Ads platform directly influences customer engagement advertiser success and long-term revenue growth at massive scale.

As a Principal Engineer you will own the architecture and technical strategy of the end-to-end ads serving ecosystem spanning retrieval ranking auction targeting machine learning infrastructure and online serving systems. You will identify future technology investments drive innovation across organizational boundaries and ensure that our platform continues to scale in performance reliability intelligence and efficiency.

This is a highly influential individual contributor role requiring exceptional technical depth strategic thinking and cross-functional leadership. You will partner with engineering machine learning product and business leaders to solve some of the most challenging problems in large-scale distributed systems and AI-powered advertising.

What You Will Do

• Define and drive the long-term technical vision architecture and strategy for Coupangs Ads Serving & ML Platform.
• Lead the design and evolution of large-scale ad serving systems including retrieval ranking auction targeting pacing and measurement.
• Drive platform modernization and adoption of emerging technologies including large language models generative AI real-time inference and next-generation ML infrastructure.
• Identify and lead strategic technical investments that improve advertiser outcomes customer experience system scalability and operational efficiency.
• Partner with engineering machine learning product and business leaders to align technical direction with company priorities and business objectives.
• Influence architecture and engineering excellence across multiple organizations through technical leadership design reviews and mentorship.
• Establish best practices for platform reliability performance scalability observability and operational excellence.
• Drive measurable business impact through innovations that improve engagement conversion relevance advertiser ROI revenue growth system efficiency and cost.
• Serve as a recognized technical leader and domain expert in large-scale advertising systems and machine learning platforms.

Required Qualifications

• 12 years of experience building large-scale software platforms machine learning systems or distributed infrastructure.
• Proven track record of architecting and operating mission-critical high-throughput online systems at internet scale.
• Deep expertise in one or more user-facing machine learning domains including advertising search recommendations or personalization.
• Strong understanding of modern machine learning systems including model training feature engineering experimentation online inference evaluation and production operations.
• Experience building and scaling AI/ML serving infrastructure including optimization of GPU- and CPU-based systems for latency throughput and cost efficiency.
• Strong understanding of large language models (LLMs) foundation models retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and production AI serving architectures.
• Deep knowledge of retrieval and ranking systems including:
  • Relevance and personalization
  • Candidate generation and ranking
  • Precision recall latency and cost trade-offs
  • Online experimentation and model evaluation
• Demonstrated ability to drive significant business impact through technical innovation and platform evolution.
• Exceptional ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and organizations without direct authority.
• Strong software engineering skills in Java C or Python.
• Experience developing distributed systems that process and serve large-scale datasets with high availability and low latency.
• MS or above in Computer Science Engineering or a related technical discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building large-scale advertising platforms ad ranking systems auction systems or sponsored search products.
• Experience in e-commerce marketplaces or consumer internet companies operating at significant scale.
• Expertise in real-time machine learning recommendation systems search infrastructure or large-scale personalization platforms.
• Proven contributions to architectural transformations or platform modernization initiatives across large organizations.
• Strong passion for exploring emerging technologies and translating innovation into business value.
• Experience working in high-growth fast-scaling technology companies.
• PhD in Computer Science Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence or related fields.

Pay & Benefits

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. At Coupang your base pay is one part of your total compensation.

The base pay for this position ranges from$207900/yearin our lowest geographic market to$386100/yearin our highest geographic market. Pay is based on several factors including market location and may vary depending onjob-related knowledge skills and experience.

General Description of All Benefits

• Medical/Dental/Vision/LifeAD&D insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) & Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Long-term/Short-term Disability
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) program
• 401K Plan with Company Match
• 18-21 days of the Paid Time Off (PTO) a year based on the tenure
• 12 Public Holidays
• Paid Parental leave
• Pre-tax commuterbenefits
• MTV - Free Electric Car Charging Station

General Description of Other Compensation

Other Compensation includes but is not limited to bonuses equity or other forms of compensation that wouldbe offered to the hired applicant in addition to their established salary range orwage scale.

Coupang is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to actual or perceived race (including traits historically associated with race including but not limited to hair texture and protective hair styles) color religion religious creed (including religious dress and grooming practices) sex or gender (including pregnancy childbirth breastfeeding and medical conditions related to pregnancy childbirth or breastfeeding) gender identity gender expression sexual orientation ancestry national origin (including language use restrictions) age (40 and over) physical or mental disability medical condition genetic information HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C status family status (including but not limited to marital or domestic partnership status) military or veteran status use of a trained dog guide or service animal political activities or affiliations ancestry citizenship family and medical leave status status as a victim of any violent crime or any other characteristic or class protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Coupang is also committed to providing a safe work environment for its employees and its consumers If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application of recruiting process due to a disability please contact us at .

Required Experience:

Staff IC