Lead Architect, Ads Serving & ML Platform

Coupang; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 208,000 - 386,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) & HSA

Long-term/Short-term Disability

401K Plan with Company Match

18-21 days PTO per year

12 Public Holidays

Paid Parental leave

Electric car charging station

Job summary

Coupang is seeking a Principal Engineer to define and lead the technical vision for the Ads Serving & ML Platform, a mission-critical system powered by large-scale ML and AI. You will own architecture across retrieval, ranking, auction, targeting, and online serving, driving investments to scale, reliability, and efficiency.

You will partner with engineering, ML, product, and business leaders to align direction with priorities, influence multiple teams, and raise the bar on platform quality and

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience building large-scale software platforms, machine learning systems, or distributed infrastructure.
• Proven track record of architecting and operating mission-critical, high-throughput online systems at internet scale.
• Deep expertise in one or more user-facing machine learning domains, including advertising, search, recommendations, or personalization.
• Strong understanding of modern machine learning systems, including model training, feature engineering, experimentation, online inference, evaluation, and production operations.
• Experience building and scaling AI/ML serving infrastructure, including optimization of GPU- and CPU-based systems for latency, throughput, and cost efficiency.
• Strong understanding of large language models (LLMs), foundation models, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and production AI serving architectures.
• Deep knowledge of retrieval and ranking systems, including relevance and personalization, candidate generation and ranking, precision/recall, latency and cost trade-offs, online experimentation and model evaluation.
• Demonstrated ability to drive significant business impact through technical innovation and platform evolution.
• Exceptional ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and organizations without direct authority.
• Strong software engineering skills in Java, C++, or Python.
• Experience developing distributed systems that process and serve large-scale datasets with high availability and low latency.
• MS or above in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term technical vision, architecture, and strategy for Coupang's Ads Serving & ML Platform.
• Lead the design and evolution of large-scale ad serving systems, including retrieval, ranking, auction, targeting, pacing, and measurement.
• Drive platform modernization and adoption of emerging technologies, including large language models, generative AI, real-time inference, and next-generation ML infrastructure.
• Identify and lead strategic technical investments that improve advertiser outcomes, customer experience, system scalability, and operational efficiency.
• Partner with engineering, machine learning, product, and business leaders to align technical direction with company priorities and business objectives.
• Influence architecture and engineering excellence across multiple organizations through technical leadership, design reviews, and mentorship.
• Establish best practices for platform reliability, performance, scalability, observability, and operational excellence.
• Drive measurable business impact through innovations that improve engagement, conversion, relevance, advertiser ROI, revenue growth, system efficiency and cost.
• Serve as a recognized technical leader and domain expert in large-scale advertising systems and machine learning platforms.

Education

MS or above in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Coupang is seeking a Principal Engineer to define and lead the technical vision for the Ads Serving & ML Platform, a mission-critical system powered by large-scale ML and AI. You will own architecture across retrieval, ranking, auction, targeting, and online serving, driving investments to scale, reliability, and efficiency.

You will partner with engineering, ML, product, and business leaders to align direction with priorities, influence multiple teams, and raise the bar on platform quality and