Senior Software Engineer (Tech Lead)

Engineering At Permutive

We’re 30+ engineers working to build an outstanding engineering culture so that everyone who joins has the opportunity and the support to do the best work of their life. Small, autonomous teams are important to us, and we want to empower everyone to make decisions confidently and take ownership of their impact.

We operate at a massive scale: our platform handles more requests each day than there are new tweets and Google searches, and each month we serve more than 2 billion user devices. We combine our patented edge-computing capabilities and low-latency cloud services to deliver real-time customer experiences.

We think applying functional programming techniques like compositionality and type-safety is the best way to build the type of massively distributed system our platform comprises, allowing us to move fast without sacrificing quality.

About Us

Permutive is a privacy-first, real-time data platform that enables publishers and advertisers to activate first-party audiences at scale without relying on third-party cookies. Built on a high-throughput edge infrastructure and a deep commitment to user consent, our engineering teams solve complex data problems at scale using functional programming and modern distributed systems design.

Our unique technology sits behind some of the world's largest publishers such as News Corp, Hearst, BuzzFeed, The Guardian, Conde Nast International to name a few — we enable them to understand and personalise user experiences for hundreds of millions of people every month.

Thanks to our category-defining edge technology, we've attracted the attention of global investment partners like SoftBank Vision Fund and EQT Ventures. Additionally, we are listed among Y Combinator’s Top 150 companies of all time.

About the Role

Permutive is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the Connectivity team and build the data interoperability layer that brings customer and partner data into Permutive and routes enriched data back out to where it’s needed.

You’ll play a pivotal role in shaping technical direction, working closely with peers and stakeholders to design scalable systems and ensure robust delivery. This includes mentoring other engineers, guiding architectural decisions, and actively contributing to both technical execution and cross-team collaboration. Your leadership will help define how we build, scale, and evolve the platform.

About the team

The Connectivity team builds and operates the core platform that enables all data onboarding and exporting within Permutive. We deliver the infrastructure, tools, and self-service interfaces that empower other teams (and customers) to easily build and integrate new data sources and destinations. Instead of building every pipeline, we provide the robust, cross-cloud capabilities, including automated schema discovery, governance, ETL, and orchestration, that others build on top of.

The Connectivity platform powers the ingestion of data from sources like BigQuery, Snowflake, S3, and GCS, making it available to Permutive's cohort creation, analytics, and activation products. Additionally, we enable our customers to export data from our platform to data lakes and ad-tech destinations.

Most of our application and service code is written in Scala in a functional style and using the Typelevel stack. A functional programming approach helps us build reliable, composable, and testable systems.
Our infrastructure runs on Kubernetes in Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and we rely on Google and open‑source components such as Kafka, Bigtable, BigQuery, Dataflow, Airbyte, Airflow, and Postgres.

What you’ll need?

• Proven experience in technical leadership, with the ability to mentor engineers, drive architectural decisions, and take ownership of the team's delivery.

• Excellent communication skills, in particular, when discussing technical concepts.

• Experience leading conversations with customers and internal stakeholders.

• Experience with functional programming languages (preferred) like Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang or statically-typed languages like Java, Kotlin, Rust.

• Experience with designing systems that have to operate at scale.

• A strong interest in and understanding of batch and stream data processing.

• A proactive, curiosity-driven mindset for solving problems, with a keen interest in leveraging AI tools to enhance productivity.

We'd be particularly excited if you have one or more of the below

• Experience with messaging systems (e.g. Kafka or Kinesis)

• Experience with distributed data stores (e.g. Bigtable, DynamoDB)

• Experience building and deploying microservices on Kubernetes, running on infrastructure managed as code with tools like Terraform

• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP

• Familiarity with stream processing frameworks, e.g. Spark, Beam, or Flink

• Familiarity with modern data warehouse or data lake architectures (e.g. Snowflake, Databricks).

What we’re offering?

We take a structured, objective approach to salary-setting, which is based on market information, our compensation strategy, and your experience and capability as assessed through our interview process. For a typical candidate who meets our requirements, we would pay between £115,000 - £130,000 + options.

Permutive Benefits

• In this together: As a full-time employee, you'll become a shareholder with stock options, sharing in our collective success.

• Family Comes First: Primary caregivers receive up to 6 months of fully paid leave and secondary caregivers receive 3 months of fully paid leave to bond with their little ones.

• Your Time, Your Way: Flexible hours let you fit work around your life, whether it's hitting the gym, meditating, or handling family needs.

• Upgraded Workspace: A £350 budget helps you create the perfect home office setup.

• Recharge & Refocus: Unlimited paid time off (with a minimum of 25 days + public holidays) ensures you get the rest you need.

• Grow with Us: Ongoing training and development opportunities fuel your career aspirations.

• Mental Health Matters: We prioritise your well-being with free access to Spill, our mental health partner.

• Comprehensive Care: Enjoy virtual GP visits, healthcare services, work-life consultations.

• Secure your future: Our pension plan with Penfold helps you secure your financial future (employer contributes 3%, employee contributes 5%).

• A company-paid Cursor Pro subscription for all engineers.

Work Your Way

Permutive trusts you to manage your time and deliver results. Our hybrid model allows you to choose where you work best, whether in your own productive space or our London (Farringdon) or New York (Union Square) offices. That said, none of us work alone; we are part of a team. 

To foster collaboration and connection, teams in these locations come together in person at least once a week and are encouraged to benefit from being in our offices to meet with teams more often. Commercial and customer-facing teams are encouraged to embrace in-person interactions to build lasting relationships with clients and colleagues. 

Every Permutive employee gets together in person at the company’s Annual Kick Off for a week in February.  Each year’s event promises to be an exciting opportunity for us to come together, reconnect with colleagues, and align on our shared vision for the year ahead.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

At Permutive, we’re taking a thoughtful, intersectional, long-term approach to diversity, equity & inclusion. We care deeply about creating an inclusive work environment that allows everyone to flourish, and we are taking continual action to progress in that direction.

We’re committed to hiring people regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, age, neurodiversity status, disability status, or otherwise.