Principal Engineer

Aperture Cloud is transforming the retail media space with its cutting-edge, AI-driven ad tech infrastructure APIs that power the Retail Media Cloud™. This groundbreaking solution combines the power of AI insights with API-based technology, allowing multi-brand retailers to build dynamic, customizable ad platforms while maintaining full control of their first-party data. With Aperture Cloud , retailers can deliver personalized shopper experiences, optimize ad targeting, and unlock predictive insights to stay ahead in an ever-evolving market. JOB OVERVIEW: The Delivery team is responsible for enhancements and maintenance of the core of Aperture Cloud ’s main revenue stream - ad serving. These high-throughput systems operate globally with strict latency and availability requirements. This engineer will work with the team on modernizing the systems, improving reliability and robustness, while developing new features to gain new customers. LOCATION: REMOTE - HUNGARY. This position is 100% remote. Applicants located anywhere within Hungary are encouraged to apply. Applicants must be legally eligible to work within Hungary. PAY TRANSPARENCY: Aperture Cloud uses external, third-party market data to determine compensation for all open positions. Our compensation philosophy is based on the candidate’s specific working location and experience level . This means that we will take a no negotiation approach in our recruitment and offer processes. We believe this is an important step in living our value of embracing diversity while underlining our commitment to fair, equitable and inclusive pay practices. The pay range for this position is between HUF 26,000,000 - HUF 29,000,000. An exact offer for this position will be determined based on the candidate's working location and experience level, in relation to our existing team. All compensation packages include the additional benefits as described in the 'Why you'll love working with us' section below. We also have a transparent ‘Total Rewards Philosophy’ we’d be happy to share with you which describes our overall approach to compensation and benefits in full detail! Our recruitment team can share more about this with you in an initial phone interview and will be happy to answer any questions you have related to compensation at Aperture Cloud ! WHAT YOU'LL ACCOMPLISH: Evolve the ad decision pipeline, including balancing and pacing, indexing, filtering, selection, and budgeting. Improve the platform's architectural qualities, helping ensure our foundation provides the scalability, reliability, security, and performance our global customers require. Work closely with the product management team to help design and build new features. Help provide operational oversight for the platform, making sure we are up and running 24/7. Work closely with our customer success teams to deliver value and drive growth. SKILLS YOU'LL BRING WITH YOU: Required : Experience building and operating distributed systems in a cloud environment. Strong programming experience in at least one production backend language, ideally Clojure, Rust, Node.js, Java, Kotlin, Scala, or another JVM language. Experience designing or maintaining latency-sensitive systems with tight response-time requirements. Experience with HTTP-based APIs and production service integrations. Experience working with databases, including transactional data models. Comfortable participating in an on-call rotation with clear escalation paths. Preferred : Strong AWS and/or GCP experience across compute, storage, messaging, networking, and IAM. Experience with infrastructure as code, such as AWS CDK, CDKTF, Terraform, or similar tools. Experience with event streaming or stream processing systems. Experience with observability platforms, including metrics, logs, alerts, tracing, and infrastructure monitoring. Experience improving testability and reducing feedback cycle times through unit, integration, simulation, or load testing. Experience refactoring existing distributed systems without changing external behavior. Experience working on high-throughput systems with sub-100ms response budgets. Nice To Have : Experience with ad serving, auctions, pacing, budgeting, targeting, or real-time decisioning systems. Experience with functional programming or Clojure specifically. Experience modernizing legacy systems while keeping production systems highly available. Experience supporting globally distributed, multi-region services. Experience working closely with product and customer-facing teams on technical product features. *For a glimpse into some of the technical problems this team works on, you can watch Tim Ewald’s Clojure/conj presentation ! WHY YOU'LL LOVE WORKING WITH US: Fully Remote Team: We are a 100% remote work environment with employees located around the world. You are welcome to work from home, one of our offices, a WeWork office, or an equivalent co-working space. Flexible Working Hours: We understand our employees have their own lives, responsibilities and working pref