Principal Software Engineer

The opportunity

At Unity, we’re building a world-class advertising platform that operates at a massive global scale. The Ads team powers the systems that connect advertisers with creators and players, driving performance, reliability, and growth across our ecosystem.

As a Data Engineer on the Feature Platform team, you’ll play a critical role in building the data foundations that power machine learning, experimentation, and optimization across our ads ecosystem. You’ll operate at the core of our ML infrastructure, transforming raw, high-volume event data into reliable, production-grade feature datasets used for bidding, attribution, and ranking systems.

You will work at the intersection of business logic, large-scale distributed processing, and platform engineering — translating complex and evolving product requirements into scalable, well-modeled, and reproducible data systems. This role goes beyond analytics enablement; it focuses on building durable, high-quality data infrastructure that supports both offline training workflows and online feature serving.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys owning data architecture end-to-end, collaborating closely with ML, backend, and product teams, and designing systems that prioritize correctness, performance, and long-term maintainability at scale.

What you'll be doing

• Design, build, and operate scalable, production-grade data pipelines and curated datasets powering ads optimization and ML systems.

• Own end-to-end offline data flows from raw event ingestion to feature-ready datasets ensuring correctness, reproducibility, and SLA compliance.

• Develop and maintain large-scale batch and streaming workflows (Python / Java / SQL) with strong focus on performance, cost-efficiency, and reliability.

• Contribute to our Feature Store platform, including collaboration with the high-throughput online serving layer (Go-based services).

• Translate complex product and monetization logic into durable, extensible data models serving analytics and machine learning use cases.

• Improve observability, validation frameworks, and data quality standards across pipelines.

• Drive architectural decisions and engineering best practices within the Feature Platform team.

What we're looking for

• Strong Data Modeling & SQL Expertise: deep experience designing scalable, well-structured data models. Strong understanding of partitioning, schema evolution, and performance optimization.

• Production-Grade Pipeline Experience: hands-on experience building and operating large-scale ETL/ELT systems using Python, Java, SQL, or similar technologies in distributed environments.

• Distributed Processing: experience with frameworks such as Spark or Flink, in both: streaming, and batch mode. Strong understanding of parallel computation and performance tuning.

• Systems Awareness: understanding of how offline data systems integrate with online serving layers (e.g., feature stores, APIs, low-latency systems).

• Experience with Go is a plus, particularly for collaboration on high-throughput feature serving services.

• Modern Cloud Infrastructure: experience working in cloud-native environments, containerized systems, Kubernetes, and orchestration tools.

• Ownership & Reliability Mindset: strong focus on data correctness, observability, and long-term maintainability. Ability to independently drive complex initiatives.

You might also have

• Experience with ML infrastructure or feature stores.

• Experience working with ads, attribution, or monetization data.

• Familiarity with experimentation and metrics pipelines.

• Exposure to high-scale backend systems.

Additional information

• Relocation support is not available for this position

• Work visa/immigration sponsorship is not available for this position

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.

Please note: Benefits eligibility, specific offerings, and coverage vary based on the country and employment status.

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

Life at Unity

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.

Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this Web site or directly to managers. Unity does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes. Unity will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Unity.

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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.

At Unity, we're committed to creating a workplace that fosters collaboration and teamwork that allows you to harness your unique skills. Join us in creating industry tools to help creators of all levels bring their projects to reality.

Learn more about our culture and values ( , and get a head start by reading about how our hiring process works ( .