Principal Software Engineering Manager

About the Role

Pro Rata.ai is building the future of digital advertising for the AI era. Powered by patent‑pending AI agent technology, Pro Rata Ads delivers highly contextual, prompt‑driven advertising that understands both brand intent and content semantics in real time. Our platform powers innovative ad experiences across Gist.ai and a growing network of premium publishers. We are looking for a Principal Software Engineering Manager (Tech Lead) to play a foundational role in designing and scaling our Pro Rata Ads infrastructure.

You will own critical components of the ad serving system, including low‑latency ad decisioning, agentic backend workflows, robust reporting, and fraud detection.

This is a high‑impact, hands‑on leadership position. You will blend deep technical architecture with team guidance, working closely with frontend, product, and business development teams to deliver a next‑generation ad platform that is scalable, reliable, and truly AI‑native.

• Lead the design and development of our core ad serving infrastructure
  , ensuring high throughput, sub‑100ms latency, and extreme reliability at scale.
• Architect and build agentic backend systems powered by LLMs — enabling intelligent workflows for contextual ad placement, creative optimization, real‑time brand safety, and dynamic decisioning.
• Partner closely with the frontend team on campaign management, creative generation/optimization, and advertiser‑facing tools.
• Design and implement scalable reporting, analytics, and fraud detection systems to maintain ecosystem trust and performance transparency.
• Drive technical strategy for cloud‑native, distributed systems — making trade‑offs around cost, latency, availability, and AI inference efficiency.
• Mentor and grow a team of strong engineers; provide technical leadership, conduct code/design reviews, and help recruit top talent.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally with Product, Ads Engineering, and Business Development to translate business needs into robust, production‑ready systems.
• Contribute to our evolving technical roadmap, with emphasis on GenAI integration, prompt‑based advertising, and seamless performance in AI surfaces.

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3–5 years in a technical leadership or engineering manager role.
• Extensive hands‑on experience building or scaling ad serving systems for display, native, or search‑based advertising (experience at SSPs, DSPs, or large ad platforms is highly valued).
• Strong proficiency in at least one of:
  Python, Java, C++, Rust — with proven ability to write production‑grade, high‑performance code.
• Deep experience designing large‑scale distributed systems in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including high availability, low‑latency architectures, and observability.
• Solid understanding of GenAI/LLM concepts; experience with prompt engineering, agentic workflows, or GPU‑based inference (CUDA/ROCm) is a strong plus.
• Track record of delivering complex, high‑impact systems end‑to‑end in fast‑moving environments.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills — able to explain complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

• Prior experience building advertising technology systems at scale.
• Hands‑on work with large language models
  , inference optimization, or agent‑based architectures.
• Startup experience — comfort operating with high ownership, evolving requirements, and limited resources.
• Familiarity with programmatic advertising concepts (OpenRTB, real‑time bidding, contextual targeting) and ad quality/fraud challenges.

The compensation for this position is competitive and commensurate with experience including:

• Base salary range: $220,000 - $260,000
• Equity participation

• Opportunity to work at the forefront of AI technology
• Collaborative and innovative work environment
• Competitive salary and benefits package
• Professional development and growth opportunities
• Chance to make a significant impact on the company's…