The Role
The Core team builds the foundational platform powering Cognitiv’s real-time bidding and campaign execution engine. Every campaign on our DSP flows through this platform—managing budgets, pacing, strategies, creatives, and configuration while feeding vital controls to high-scale downstream systems. As our scope expands, we’re looking for engineers who want to own meaningful platform architecture rather than take on narrow subsystem tickets.
As a Backend Software Engineer on the Core team, you will take on substantial platform challenges and carry them end-to-end from design through production. You will translate business and performance requirements into reliable, production-ready software across our campaign management systems while driving code quality, system stability, and steady engineering progress.
Your Impact
In this role, success is measured by the quality, reliability, and consistency of your engineering contributions. You will:
- Own Feature Delivery: Take responsibility for a feature from kickoff through post-launch support, owning the release plan, branch strategy, canary, and automated rollback.
- Deliver Reliable Code: Author production-ready code with meaningful observability (metrics/traces/logs) and automated test coverage ≥ 80%. Recognize edge cases and propose straightforward solutions with moderate guidance.
- Strengthen Reliability: Keep service SLOs green by adding missing alerts and dashboards proactively. Participate in on-call and contribute to blameless post-mortems with actionable follow-ups within sprint.
- Contribute to Design: Author design docs for single-feature or single-service work that incorporate cost, scale, and rollback considerations. Connect features to OKRs or user metrics and advocate for small UX improvements.
- Collaborate & Mentor: Facilitate design or planning meetings for the team, build trust with adjacent teams through reliable follow-through, and mentor interns or new hires on the codebase and processes.
Tech Stack: .NET Core (C#), SQL/Postgres, ClickHouse, AWS, DataDog
Required Experience & Capabilities
- Technical Proficiency: Strong programming skills in one or more modern backend languages (preferably .NET Core/C#), with experience building and shipping production software in a collaborative engineering environment.
- Data Systems: Hands-on experience working with relational databases (PostgreSQL/SQL) and high-volume data stores.
- Engineering Craft: Solid understanding of testing, debugging, code review, and software development best practices; consistently delivers well-tested, maintainable code.
- Delivery: Track record of independently delivering small-to-medium features end-to-end—from design through deployment—within a sprint cadence.
- Operational Awareness: Familiarity with on-call responsibilities, runbooks, and contributing to system reliability and operational health. (DataDog, AWS)
- Communication: Clear communicator who can explain decisions and collaborate effectively with technical and non-technical partners.
- Ability to Deliver & Ownership: Proven track record of independently taking small-to-medium features from concept to production within a sprint cadence, taking end-to-end accountability for code quality, rollouts, and post-launch health.
- Dealing with Ambiguity & Autonomy: Comfortable breaking down loosely-scoped tickets into clear technical tasks, asking the right questions early, and executing with moderate guidance rather than step-by-step direction.
- Learning & Adaptation: Quick to adopt new technologies, operational tools, and domain concepts, adjusting smoothly as system needs and business priorities evolve.
Bonus Points
- Platform & Tooling Experience: Experience with cloud platforms, distributed systems, or improving developer workflows, documentation, or internal tooling.
- Adtech/RTB Experience: Background in real-time bidding, ad serving, or similarly latency-sensitive, high-throughput systems is a plus.
Salary: $130,000 - $170,000 USD Base Salary + Equity
- Medical, Dental and Vision plan for US employees & Extended Health Benefits for Canadian employees
- 12 weeks paid parental leave + 4 weeks WFH
- Unlimited PTO + Work-From-Anywhere August
- Career development with clear advancement paths
- Equity for all employees
- Hybrid work model & daily team lunch
- Health & wellness stipend + cell phone reimbursement
- 401(k) & RRSP with employer match
- Parking (CA, WA, Vancouver offices) & pre-tax commuter benefits
- Employee Assistance Program
- Comprehensive onboarding (Cognitiv University)
- …and more!
- Festiv – We make work fun with cross-team games, events, and creative team bonding.
- Responsiv – You’ll be close to clients and leadership, influencing real outcomes.
- Inclusiv – Diversity and individuality are celebrated across all levels.
- Inventiv – We reward curiosity and embrace bold ideas.
- Transformativ – We support your growth with training, mentorship, and flexibility.
- Collaborativ – We operate across coasts, connected by purpose and teamwork.
Skills Required
- Strong programming skills in one or more modern backend languages, preferably .NET Core and C#
- Experience building and shipping production software in a collaborative engineering environment
- Hands-on experience with relational databases, including PostgreSQL or SQL, and high-volume data stores
- Understanding of testing, debugging, code review, and software development best practices
- Track record of independently delivering small-to-medium features end to end from design through deployment
- Familiarity with on-call responsibilities, runbooks, and system reliability practices
- Experience with DataDog and AWS
- Clear communication and ability to collaborate with technical and non-technical partners
- Ability to break down loosely scoped work into technical tasks and execute with moderate guidance
- Ability to learn and adopt new technologies, operational tools, and domain concepts
- Experience with cloud platforms, distributed systems, developer workflows, documentation, or internal tooling
- Experience with real-time bidding, ad serving, or latency-sensitive, high-throughput systems
What We Do
Cognitiv is a deep learning advertising company redefining how brands connect with consumers. Since 2015, we have built a custom AI platform that predicts consumer behavior in real time and drives performance at scale. Advertisers can activate through their preferred DSP, our managed service DSP, or our industry-first ContextGPT product. By combining advanced data science with flexible activation, we deliver precision, relevance, and measurable impact across channels.
Why Work With Us
At Cognitiv, you will work on real-world AI that directly shapes media performance. We are profitable, growing, and deeply technical, with close access to leadership and clients. We value curiosity, collaboration, and ownership, and we invest in your growth through equity, flexibility, and clear career paths.
