The Role
The Staff Software Engineer will design and build large-scale data pipelines, architect ETL workflows, ensure observability, drive technical evolution, and mentor team members, leveraging extensive experience in backend systems and data engineering.
Summary Generated by Built In
Samba is an AI-powered media intelligence company on a mission to give marketers the complete picture of their audiences. Our AI indexes media consumption across millions of smart TVs and 2.5 billion web pages, combining that data with third-party signals through the Samba Knowledge Graph, a map of the real interests, behaviors, and purchase intent of 1.5 billion user profiles globally. Brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms use Samba to make smarter decisions across every stage of the marketing funnel.
We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Identity team in Amsterdam. The Identity team builds and operates the core systems that power Samba cross-device identity resolution, data onboarding, and distribution capabilities, the foundational layer connecting data to advertisers, agencies, data partners, and internal product teams.
You will architect and deliver large-scale, cloud-native data engineering systems that ingest, transform, and distribute identity-linked data at scale.
You bring 12+ years of experience and operate as a technical authority, setting direction, resolving complex ambiguity, and shaping how Identity systems evolve to support Samba’s expanding product ecosystem. You are a subject matter expert recognized across the organization, drive cross-functional alignment, and are accountable for outcomes that span the Identity domain and broader product engineering.
What You'll Do
- Design, build, and operate large-scale data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and distribution of identity-linked data, setting the standard for reliability, accuracy, and extensibility across the domain.
- Architect ETL/ELT workflows using distributed computing frameworks on cloud infrastructure, making and owning the key engineering decisions that shape how the team builds and scales.
- Design and build API-first, platform-grade services that expose Identity capabilities as self-service building blocks, with clear contracts, strong reliability, and ease of integration for internal teams and external clients.
- Define and implement observability, data quality validation, and monitoring frameworks to ensure pipeline health at scale.
- Drive performance optimization, cloud cost efficiency, and platform-thinking across Identity’s systems, ensuring components are reusable and enable downstream teams to build with confidence.
- Own the technical evolution of Identity’s core systems, including probabilistic and deterministic matching, device graph construction, and audience segmentation — driving their reliability, scalability, and long-term direction.
- Architect and implement secure data collaboration capabilities, including clean room workflows and privacy-preserving computation, embedding privacy-by-design across all system development with deep application of GDPR, CCPA, and Samba’s data governance policies.
- Set the technical direction for how Identity systems serve all downstream use cases, engaging product, data science, commercial, and partner stakeholders to ensure alignment and fit for purpose.
- Own technical design and architecture for Identity systems producing clear, decision-driven design documents, contributing to org-level architectural discussions, and driving alignment across engineering, product, and commercial stakeholders.
- Lead code and design reviews, champion high standards for code quality, testability, and maintainability, and drive formal alignment across teams on shared tooling and patterns.
- Mentor and invest in the growth of engineers across the Identity team through structured feedback, pairing, and design reviews, raising the bar for the team as a whole.
- Partner with the Engineering Manager and cross-functional leads on roadmap shaping, technical planning, and systemic risk resolution.
- Own the end-to-end reliability of Identity systems, lead incident response, drive post-mortem actions to closure, and deliver sustained improvements to system health.
- Define, monitor, and continuously improve SLAs, SLOs, and operational metrics for Identity pipelines and services.
- Drive maturity in CI/CD, deployment practices, and testing coverage across the team’s systems.
Who You Are
- 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep expertise in data engineering, backend systems, or distributed data infrastructure.
- Proven ability to own technical architecture end-to-end in a complex, production data environment, from design through delivery and operations.
- Strong command of Python and SQL; comfortable with JavaScript in full-stack or API contexts.
- Extensive hands-on experience with distributed processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Databricks) operating on large-scale datasets in production.
- Solid experience with cloud platforms (AWS and/or GCP) and their core data services.
- Experience with workflow orchestration tools (Apache Airflow, dbt, Prefect, or equivalent).Strong familiarity with data warehousing and lakehouse architectures, including Snowflake.
- Experience building platform-grade, API-first systems that enable self-service by downstream consumers, internal teams or external clients.
- Deep understanding of data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) with practical experience building privacy-compliant systems that handle PII at scale.
- Familiarity with secure data collaboration concepts, data clean rooms, privacy-preserving computation, or equivalent patterns.
- An exceptional communicator and cross-functional collaborator, able to write sharp technical designs, convey advanced information to diverse stakeholders, and drive alignment in ambiguous situations. A genuine mentor and coach who invests in the growth of others, gives direct feedback, and raises the bar for the team as a whole.
- Experience in ad tech, identity resolution, data licensing, or digital media, familiarity with device graphs, audience segmentation, or programmatic data flows.
- Experience with streaming data processing frameworks (e.g., Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming).Experience incorporating AI and machine learning capabilities into production data workflows.
- Track record of cross-team technical leadership: architectural documentation, engineering standards, or mentorship programs.
Preferred
#LI-WD1
Base salary is just one component of Samba total compensation package for employees. Other rewards may include bonuses, short-term incentives, and long-term incentives. In addition, Samba provides health insurance, wellness offerings, life and disability insurance, a retirement savings plan, paid holidays and paid time off (PTO), and other employee benefits.
Samba is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We strive to empower connection with one another, reflect the communities we serve, and tackle meaningful projects that make a real impact.
Samba may collect personal information directly from you, as a job applicant, Samba may also receive personal information from third parties, for example, in connection with a background, employment or reference check, in accordance with the applicable law. For further details, please see Samba's Applicant Privacy Policy. For residents of the EU , Samba Inc. is the data controller.
Top Skills
Apache Airflow
AWS
Databricks
Dbt
GCP
JavaScript
Python
Snowflake
Spark
SQL
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The Company
What We Do
Television remains a vibrant cultural influence and an essential source of entertainment and information worldwide. Tremendous growth in content choices, and viewing platforms that allow us to watch anything, anytime, on any screen, has actually made it harder for viewers to discover and keep up with all the great programming available. It’s also more competitive for content providers to keep your attention, and for marketers to make strong, measurable connections with their target consumers. Technology that improves the viewing experience, enables content discovery, and addresses audience fragmentation across screens will strengthen television’s business model and relevance to consumers. Data is at the center of any solution to make TV better. Samba TV's technology is built into Smart TVs and easily maps to smart phones and tablets. By recognizing what's on screen, Samba TV learns what viewers like and using machine learning algorithms, enables discovery of shows and actors in a whole new way. Likewise, our data and measurement products are transforming the way stakeholders across the media landscape are thinking about their business. Given the dramatic growth in streaming services, connected devices, time-shifting, and multi-screen viewership, our data products solve real problems and create a meaningful competitive advantage for our clients.
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