Staff Software Engineer

Staff Backend Developer

Unity Ads is looking for a Staff Backend Developer to join our team, where we build the real-time systems that power Unity's global advertising platform. This is a high-scale, low-latency environment — processing billions of requests daily to deliver fast, relevant ads to players around the world. Our backend infrastructure is designed for reliability and scalability, ensuring seamless ad delivery and optimal performance even under heavy traffic. As part of the team, you will work on distributed systems that handle real-time ad requests, impression tracking, and user data analytics with strict requirements for uptime and security. You'll play a critical role in optimizing performance, maintaining service availability, and supporting the development of new monetization features for game developers worldwide. Security, data privacy, and a positive user experience are central to everything we build.

You'll help modernize the legacy tech stack and the core services behind ad delivery, bidding, reporting, and analytics. This is a great opportunity for an engineer who's excited to work on performance-critical systems, collaborate across teams, and grow in a fast-paced environment, all at a turning point in the company.

What you'll be doing

• Design, build, and modernise backend services and APIs that support ad delivery
• Work on scalable, high-availability systems used across Unity's ads ecosystem
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and data teams to deliver new features
• Improve performance, observability, and cost-efficiency of current backend systems, modernising the legacy stack
• Contribute to architectural decisions and technical direction of the platform

What we're looking for

• Experience building backend services at scale
• Proficiency in Golang, and relational databases (e.g., MySQL)
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and observability tools (Kubernetes, Ray, etc.)
• Understanding of API design, distributed systems, and system reliability
• Strong collaboration and communication skills in a remote-first team environment

You might also have

• Experience in ad tech, programmatic advertising, or real-time bidding systems
• Background with infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform)
• Familiarity with networking, caching, or real-time data pipelines

$200,400.00 - $300,600.00

This range reflects the anticipated base salary for this position. Beyond base salary, this role may be eligible for equity awards and participation in our company incentive plans (such as annual discretionary bonuses or sales commissions). The final offer amount will depend on several factors, including geographic location and the candidate's relevant experience, professional background, and skill set.

Benefits

At Unity, we want our team members to thrive. We offer a wide range of benefits designed to support well-being and work-life balance.

While specific benefits vary, here are some of the ways we strive to take care of our eligible team members globally: Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance | Commute subsidy | Employee stock ownership | Competitive retirement/pension plans | Generous vacation and personal days | Support for new parents through leave and family-care programs | Office food snacks | Mental Health and Wellbeing programs and support | Employee Resource Groups | Global Employee Assistance Program | Training and development programs | Volunteering and donation matching program

Unity [NYSE: U] is the world's leading game engine, powering play for more than 3 billion consumers each month. The top mobile games in the world, the most played PC indie titles, the most innovative console games, and virtually all of the top XR and Web Games are developed, deployed, and grown in Unity. Unity also enables teams across industries like automotive, manufacturing, and healthcare to design, simulate, and collaborate in 3D — closing the gap between ideas and reality. For more information, please visit

Unity is a proud equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment and celebrate our employees across age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law. Our differences are strengths that enable us to support the growing and evolving needs of our customers, partners, and collaborators. If you have a disability that means there are preparations or accommodations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please fill out this form to let us know.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English.

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