Job description

Kargo creates powerful moments of connection between brands and consumers to build businesses. Every day, our dynamic teams work to radically raise the bar on what agentic AI, CTV, eCommerce, social, and mobile can do to deliver unique ad experiences across the world’s most premium platforms. Taking a Creative Science approach to all we do, we continuously innovate solutions that outperform industry benchmarks and client expectations. Kargo is growing rapidly and currently has offices in NYC, Chicago, LA, Dallas, Sydney, Auckland, London and Waterford, Ireland. Who We Hire Techies who want to build the future. Creatives who want to design it better. Communicators to win business. Collaborators to build it. Data pros who turn numbers into insights. Product builders who turn ideas into innovations. Anyone eager to be on a team that doesn’t stop to ask what’s next, because they’re already building it. The Opportunity The Kargo Platform organization builds what the rest of the business runs on: Workflow — the system of record holding the operational knowledge the company depends on, powering campaign creation, supply-side setup, and third-party integrations — alongside Self-Service Agentic Ad Buying and Creative Hub. As Principal Engineer you'll be the senior-most individual contributor across all three teams, setting multi-year technical direction, owning the architectural calls that are expensive to reverse, and deciding which things we shouldn't build at all. Your primary output is the capability of the engineers and systems around you. The Daily To-Do Set and socialize the target architecture across Workflow, Self-Service Agentic Ad Buying, and Creative Hub, with a sequenced, incremental path from legacy systems to scalable distributed services Provide architectural direction, design review, and unblocking across multiple concurrent initiatives spanning all three teams — creating leverage without becoming the bottleneck Own the high-consequence, hard-to-reverse decisions on service boundaries, data ownership, orchestration technology, and build versus buy — and say no, early and clearly, to work that shouldn't happen Establish how Kargo builds LLM-backed and agentic features: evals, guardrails, cost and latency envelopes, and failure handling Up-level Senior and Staff engineers through design coaching, structured feedback, and pairing, and own the senior technical interview bar Identify the shared patterns, services, and infrastructure that should be common across the three domains rather than rebuilt in each Partner with engineering and product leadership to translate business strategy into technical strategy, and give an honest read on technical risk Qualifications 12+ years in software engineering, including 3+ years at Staff, Principal, or demonstrably equivalent senior IC scope Deep, hands-on experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale — event streaming, async messaging (Kafka, Pub/Sub), and service coordination Strong data modelling instincts and experience evolving a system of record over years, plus building resilient integrations against third-party systems you don't control Hands-on experience building LLM-backed or agentic systems in production, with real opinions about evaluation, non-determinism, and reliability Expert-level proficiency in at least one high-performance, strongly typed language (TypeScript and/or Golang strongly preferred); deep command of CI/CD, containerization, cloud infrastructure, and production debugging at scale Demonstrated org-wide technical influence and a mentorship track record with specific examples of engineers who advanced under your guidance B.S. or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience; AdTech or programmatic experience a strong plus, as is having owned a system-of-record or integration-heavy platform in any industry In accordance with applicable federal, state, and local pay transparency laws, the anticipated base salary range for this position is listed below. In addition to base salary, this role is eligible for variable compensation — either the Kargo Sales Incentive Plan (sales roles) or an annual discretionary bonus (all other roles). Actual compensation may vary based on factors such as geographic location, work experience, education, and skills. U.S Salary Range $200,000 — $230,000 USD What We're Proud Of AdAge Best Places to Work ThinkLA Partner of the Year Built In Best Places to Work Cynopsis 2025 Top Women in Media - Jeannine Shao Collins Martech Breakthrough Awards - Best Overall Adtech Company Digiday Media Awards Best Event Cynopsis Media Impact Awards-Best CTV Platform Martech Breakthrough Awards-CTV Innovation Adweek Media Plan of the Year Awards - Best Use of Insights Following Our Lead Big Picture: kargo.com The Latest: Instagram (@kargo.hq) and LinkedIn (Kargo)

Requirements

Must-haves

The Daily To-Do
Set and socialize the target architecture across Workflow, Self-Service Agentic Ad Buying, and Creative Hub, with a sequenced, incremental path from legacy systems to scalable distributed services
Provide architectural direction, design review, and unblocking across multiple concurrent initiatives spanning all three teams — creating leverage without becoming the bottleneck
Own the high-consequence, hard-to-reverse decisions on service boundaries, data ownership, orchestration technology, and build versus buy — and say no, early and clearly, to work that shouldn't happen
Establish how Kargo builds LLM-backed and agentic features: evals, guardrails, cost and latency envelopes, and failure handling
Up-level Senior and Staff engineers through design coaching, structured feedback, and pairing, and own the senior technical interview bar
Identify the shared patterns, services, and infrastructure that should be common across the three domains rather than rebuilt in each
Partner with engineering and product leadership to translate business strategy into technical strategy, and give an honest read on technical risk
12+ years in software engineering, including 3+ years at Staff, Principal, or demonstrably equivalent senior IC scope
Deep, hands-on experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale — event streaming, async messaging (Kafka, Pub/Sub), and service coordination
Strong data modelling instincts and experience evolving a system of record over years, plus building resilient integrations against third-party systems you don't control
Hands-on experience building LLM-backed or agentic systems in production, with real opinions about evaluation, non-determinism, and reliability
Demonstrated org-wide technical influence and a mentorship track record with specific examples of engineers who advanced under your guidance
AdAge Best Places to Work
ThinkLA Partner of the Year
Built In Best Places to Work
Cynopsis 2025 Top Women in Media - Jeannine Shao Collins
Martech Breakthrough Awards - Best Overall Adtech Company
Digiday Media Awards Best Event
Cynopsis Media Impact Awards-Best CTV Platform
Martech Breakthrough Awards-CTV Innovation
Adweek Media Plan of the Year Awards - Best Use of Insights
Following Our Lead
Big Picture: kargo.com

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

airestllmtypescriptgolangci/cd

Platform: greenhouse
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