Who We Are

Kargo creates powerful moments of connection between brands and consumers to build businesses. Every day, our 600+ employees 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. Now 20+ years strong, Kargo 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.

Mission

This role exists to build and maintain the data infrastructure that powers dynamic, catalogue-driven advertising at scale. The CDA team owns the feeds and data ingestion layer — the systems that transform large-scale product catalogues and transaction data from retailers into the building blocks of high-performing ads across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and beyond. Without this engineer, the platform doesn't scale, the data doesn't flow, and advertisers can't deliver.

This is a hybrid role requiring onsite presence 4 days per week.

Outcomes — What Success Looks Like in 6–12 Months

Owns features end-to-end: Has shipped multiple features independently — from technical design through deployment and monitoring — with minimal oversight and strong production quality.
Meaningfully improves data ingestion reliability: Identifies and resolves bottlenecks or failure points in the feeds/ingestion pipeline, measurably improving uptime, latency, or data accuracy for downstream teams.
Earns trust as a platform thinker: Demonstrates clear API boundary design and system decisions that balance the needs of consuming teams with long-term platform health — recognized by peers and leads.
Elevates team code quality: Consistently delivers thorough code reviews that catch real issues, improve maintainability, and raise the bar on testing and observability practices across the team.
Grows as an AI-native engineer: Has integrated AI-assisted development tools meaningfully into their workflow and can articulate specific ways those tools have expanded the scope or quality of what they deliver.

Skills — Core Technical Capabilities

Required

4+ years building and maintaining production backend services or platforms
Proficiency in at least one modern backend language (Node.js, Go, Python, Ruby, or equivalent)
Experience designing services that process high-volume data — ingestion, transformation, or analysis at scale
Ability to define clean API boundaries and reason clearly about system design tradeoffs
Solid practices around testing, monitoring, and incident response as first-class engineering concerns
Strong communicator who collaborates effectively with engineers, PMs, and designers across a multidisciplinary team

Preferred

Exposure to distributed systems, high-availability platforms, or large-scale data pipelines
Experience with cloud or containerized environments (AWS, Docker, Kubernetes)

Competencies — Behaviors We Like to See

Ownership without prompting

Takes features from design to production and follows through on monitoring, iteration, and cleanup — without waiting to be asked
When something breaks or degrades, moves toward the problem rather than waiting for assignment

Platform thinking over short-term fixes

Makes system design decisions that account for how other teams will consume and build on the work
Actively flags technical debt and advocates for the right tradeoff between speed and long-term health

AI-native craft

Has a specific, credible point of view on how AI tools have changed their engineering practice — not just faster, but differently scoped
Brings intellectual curiosity to tooling and is willing to experiment, evaluate, and share what works

Collaborative standard-setting

Uses code review as a genuine craft conversation — gives feedback that makes the code and the engineer better
Invests in pairing and knowledge sharing with junior teammates without being asked

Our Laurels

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

Follow Our Lead

Big Picture: kargo.com
The Latest: Instagram (@kargomobile) and LinkedIn (Kargo)

Kargo is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace where all employees and applicants are treated with respect and dignity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnic origin, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or family status, national origin, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local, state, or federal law. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.

Pursuant to applicable fair chance laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Kargo will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment.

Software Engineer

Job Description