Lead Full Stack Engineer, Platform

Ovative Group; Minneapolis (MN); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

You will partner with product and engineering management to align scope, enforce standards, and scale Platform to support EMRge’s marketing analytics suite.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building web applications and guiding other engineers.
• Deep experience in Java and Spring Boot with solid design patterns.
• Strong frontend experience with React and TypeScript.
• Relational databases and microservice architecture knowledge.
• Production experience running Kubernetes (GKE).
• Infrastructure as code using Terraform across a major cloud platform.
• Designing CI/CD pipelines for multiple teams.
• Monitoring and alerting to surface real problems.
• OAuth/OIDC and Entra authentication knowledge.
• Disciplined testing from unit to smoke tests.

Responsibilities

• Make technical decisions for Platform and own results.
• Set standards for other teams and drive adoption by consensus.
• Collaborate with Engineering Manager and Product Owner on scope and timing.
• Own Platform deployment, run, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Maintain Kubernetes clusters and infrastructure as code.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to cross-team software upgrades.
• Write and review code across Java/Spring Boot and React front ends.

Skills

Java & Spring Boot

React & TypeScript

Kubernetes (GKE)

CI/CD pipelines

OAuth/OIDC

Testing practices

Mentorship

Data structures

Tools

Terraform

Git

GCP

Job description

About Ovative Group:

Ovative Group is an independent, full-funnel media, measurement, and creative firm transforming how brands grow. We partner with leading names like American Eagle, Best Buy, Domino's, The Home Depot, Polaris, and UnitedHealth Group to build smarter media and measurement programs that drive real, profitable growth.

We don't just track performance-we redefine it. Powered by our proprietary intelligence platform, EMRge, and our holistic metric Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR), we help brands connect revenue, customer, and brand outcomes into one clear picture of success. Our approach to full-funnel strategy, buying, and measurement delivers results that matter-and it's getting noticed. Our work has been recognized by Digiday, Google, USA Today, Inc. 5000, and Search Engine Land.

About the Role:

Platform is the shared foundation under EMRge, our proprietary marketing and analytics product suite. We own how people get access, the gateway every request passes through, and the tooling other teams build and ship with to elevate speed and quality in our development teams. We're looking for a Lead Engineer to be the technical leader of this team.

Responsibilities of a Lead Full Stack Engineer, Platform :

Technical Leadership

You make the technical decisions for Platform and own the results.

You set the standards other teams build against, and you explain the reasoning so people adopt them by choice.

You work with the Engineering Manager and Product Owner on scope and timing. The technical decision rests with you.

DevOps and Infrastructure

You own how Platform gets built, deployed, and run. That covers our GCP environment, the Cloud Run services, and the GKE clusters that run our data jobs.

Our infrastructure lives in code, and you keep it there. Any environment can be rebuilt from the repo, and a new service has a standard path to production.

You own the CI/CD pipelines and set the patterns other teams reuse for builds, automated testing, and releases.

You're hands-on with Kubernetes, including capacity, upgrades, and the day-to-day upkeep that keeps clusters healthy.

You build the monitoring, alerting, and runbooks that let the whole team run what we ship.

Governance and Speed

Platform helps the rest of engineering move faster inside clear guardrails. You build the paved road, with CI/CD templates and standard environments that let teams get access and stand up new services on their own.

You put strong controls where the stakes are highest and keep everything else light.

You measure the results, including request turnaround and how much work flows through self-serve.

Reliability and Security

Platform sits under every EMRge product, so its reliability shapes everyone's experience. You keep our release process predictable.

You own the gateway and our authorization services.

You keep frameworks and dependencies current, and you work with IT and Infosec to keep our SOC2 evidence in good shape.

You're part of the on-call rotation and lead the response when the team needs you.

Hands-On Delivery

You still write code across the Java/Spring Boot services and the React front end, and you take on the most complex work.

Your reviews are quick and specific, with an eye toward code that's easy to maintain for years.

You make sure code, especially AI-generated code, is understood and owned by whoever submits it.

Engineering Excellence and Mentorship

You make the engineers around you better. Some of that is 1:1 mentoring, and a lot of it comes through how you review and how you explain a decision.

Your influence reaches beyond Platform. You help shape how the full-stack community across engineering builds and upgrades software.

You help us hire well by running technical screens and setting the bar.

You help the team adopt AI-assisted development in ways that speed us up while keeping quality and security high.

Requirements :

• 8+ years building web applications, including time setting technical direction for other engineers.
• Deep experience in Java and Spring Boot, with sound judgment on design patterns and data structures.
• Strong front end experience in React and TypeScript.
• Solid command of relational databases and microservice architecture.
• Production experience running Kubernetes, ideally GKE.
• Infrastructure as code, such as Terraform, across a major cloud platform.
• CI/CD pipeline design for multiple teams.
• Monitoring and alerting that surfaces real problems.
• Working knowledge of authentication and authorization, such as OAuth/OIDC and Entra.
• A disciplined testing practice that runs from unit tests through smoke tests.
• A record of getting ot