[Remote] Principal Data Engineer Boulder, Colorado or New York City, New York or Remote

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Sovrn is a Software and Data business that helps Open Web businesses be and remain independent. They are seeking a Principal Data Engineer to own the design and evolution of data platform systems, lead architectural decisions, and establish AI engineering practices across the team.ResponsibilitiesOwn the design and evolution of data platform systems that operate at exchange scale; high throughput, real-time streaming, and always-on batch pipelinesLead architectural decisions across data infrastructure: pipeline design, data modeling, lakehouse architecture, and data services layersSpecify data platform components and configurations required for pipeline implementation; define pipeline observability to understand and improve performance at massive scaleResearch, implement, and evolve methods to process and democratize data across the organizationDrive technical standards, design reviews, and engineering best practices across a senior teamPartner with product, data science, and platform teams to ship end-to-endEstablish and champion AI engineering practices across the team, from prompt engineering and RAG patterns to agentic workflow design, LLM evaluation, and progressive implementation of agentic design patternsIdentify high-leverage opportunities to apply AI in our data stack: intelligent pipeline optimization, anomaly detection, automated data quality, forecasting, and LLM-powered data servicesLead the evolution of our existing LLM and agentic tooling from passive use to intentional, well-architected integration within our data platformSet standards for how we evaluate, trust, and operate AI-powered systems in production, including observability, fallback behavior, and model governanceHelp the broader engineering team build fluency and confidence with AI tooling, not just tolerance of itProvide domain expertise across the organization to enable business growth through data services and data modelsProvide counsel to all consumers and stakeholders of data to enable efficient and impactful use of our data assetsMentor and level up engineers through code review, design collaboration, and hands-on guidance; foster a culture of innovation and continuous learningOperate with high autonomy across ambiguous, high-impact problemsSkills10+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong data engineering and backend track record5+ years working specifically in adtech data infrastructure, SSP, DSP, exchange, or ad server environmentsDeep fluency in the programmatic ecosystem: OpenRTB, bid request/response flows, auction mechanics, supply path optimization, or similarExcellent understanding of real-time streaming and batch pipelines, big data, and data lakes; hands-on experience in distributed data processing in the AWS ecosystemStrong understanding of second-layer big data platforms such as Snowflake and Databricks, applicable use cases, best practices, implementation, and support considerationsStrong experience in structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data techniques; metadata management, data lineage, and data governanceExperience with data security and compliance (PII, CCPA, GDPR, etc.)Demonstrated experience leading AI or agentic engineering efforts in production environments; not just experimentation, but shipped, operated, and iterated onHands-on experience with LLM integration patterns: RAG, vector DBs, tool use, multi-step agentic workflows, prompt engineering, and evaluation frameworksAbility to clearly document and communicate architectural concepts at multiple levels; ability to lead problem definition, solution designs, and implementation work plansUnderstanding of DevOps and SRE practicesComfort driving technical decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environmentsA point of view on where AI is and isn't the right too, and the credibility to make that caseBenefitsBonusEquityBenefitsStock optionsMedical, dental, and vision coverageShort and long-term disabilityLife insurance11 paid holidaysFlexible vacationCommuter benefitsA 401(k) plan and matchA paid parental leave programCompany OverviewOnScroll was acquired by Sovrn in 2016. It was founded in 2012, and is headquartered in London, England, GBR, with a workforce of 201-500 employees. Its website is http://www.OnScroll.com.