Senior Backend Engineer, Ads Privacy

Unity; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 165,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health insurance

Employee stock ownership

Generous vacation and personal days

Commute subsidy

Job summary

Unity is the world’s leading game engine, powering billions of real-time decisions every day in our ad system. This role focuses on privacy compliance, moderation, and fraud prevention to keep the network trustworthy.

You will own privacy-critical services end-to-end—from design through production—across the request path, collaborating with legal, ML, and data teams to ensure compliant, reliable operation.

Qualifications

• Experience designing low-latency APIs and distributed backend services running at high QPS in production.
• Proficiency implementing scalable code in Golang; Java also welcome.
• Hands-on experience operating services on cloud infrastructure with Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Experience with streaming platforms such as Kafka, and with event-driven system design.
• Comfort working on systems where correctness is externally audited and the requirements come from outside engineering.
• Effective written and verbal communication, and the ability to work effectively in multi-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the systems that carry consent and opt-out signals from the SDK through to the auction, in the request path at high QPS, owning their latency, correctness, and reliability
• Own data subject request fulfilment: orchestrating deletion across many downstream systems and teams, tracking it to completion, and holding the SLA
• Translate new and changing regulations (GDPR, CCPA) into per-jurisdiction configuration and enforcement that ships without a code change per country
• Build the measurement and auditing that proves the above is actually working, and catch it when it isn't
• Contribute to the team's wider trust and safety surface: content policy enforcement at scale, deduplication and labeling, and tooling that detects and mitigates fraud across the marketplace
• Partner with legal and privacy counsel to turn evolving requirements into working systems, and with ML and data engineers to put models and pipelines into production
• Manage your own priorities and drive work across team boundaries

Skills

Low-latency API design

Golang

Java

Kubernetes

Kafka

Event-driven design

Communication

Tools

Postgres

MongoDB

Redis

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Job description

The opportunity

At Unity, we don't just help game developers build their games: we help them grow what they've built, and get their titles in front of the right players, through an ad system that makes billions of real-time decisions every day.

The opportunity

At Unity, we don't just help game developers build their games: we help them grow what they've built, and get their titles in front of the right players, through an ad system that makes billions of real-time decisions every day.

Every one of those decisions has to respect what a player has consented to, across dozens of jurisdictions whose rules disagree with each other and change every year. Getting that right at this scale is a permanent engineering problem. It belongs to our Ads Privacy team, which owns privacy compliance alongside the creative moderation and fraud prevention systems that keep the network trustworthy. You will own privacy-critical services end to end, from design through production. You will work in the request path, where a wrong answer is both a legal exposure and a revenue event.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Build and operate the systems that carry consent and opt-out signals from the SDK through to the auction, in the request path at high QPS, owning their latency, correctness, and reliability
• Own data subject request fulfilment: orchestrating deletion across many downstream systems and teams, tracking it to completion, and holding the SLA
• Translate new and changing regulations (GDPR, CCPA) into per-jurisdiction configuration and enforcement that ships without a code change per country
• Build the measurement and auditing that proves the above is actually working, and catch it when it isn't
• Contribute to the team's wider trust and safety surface: content policy enforcement at scale, deduplication and labeling, and tooling that detects and mitigates fraud across the marketplace
• Partner with legal and privacy counsel to turn evolving requirements into working systems, and with ML and data engineers to put models and pipelines into production
• Manage your own priorities and drive work across team boundaries

What We’re Looking For

• Experience designing low-latency APIs and distributed backend services running at high QPS in production
• Proficiency implementing scalable code in Golang; Java also welcome
• Hands-on experience operating services on cloud infrastructure with Kubernetes and container orchestration
• Experience with streaming platforms such as Kafka, and with event-driven system design
• Comfort working on systems where correctness is externally audited and the requirements come from outside engineering
• Effective written and verbal communication, and the ability to work effectively in multi-functional teams

You might also have

• Experience in AdTech, and familiarity with IAB frameworks such as TCF
• Background in privacy engineering, trust and safety, or fraud detection
• Working knowledge of global privacy and data regulations (GDPR, CCPA, and the frameworks that keep following them)
• Experience with SQL, NoSQL, and key-value stores such as Postgres, MongoDB, and Redis
• Experience working alongside ML engineers or data teams to put models and data pipelines into production
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and observability tooling such as Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry

Additional Information

International relocation support is not available for this position

Base Salary Range

Zone A: $172,400 - $224,100 USD
Zone B: $153,400 - $199,400 USD
Zone C: $135,800 - $176,400 USD

This range reflects the anticipated base salary for this position. Beyond base salary, this role may be eligible for equity awards and participation in our company incentive plans (such as annual discretionary bonuses or sales commissions). The final offer amount will depend on several factors, including geographic location and the candidate’s relevant experience, professional background, and skill set.

Benefits

At Unity, we want our team members to thrive. We offer a wide range of benefits designed to support well-being and work-life balance. Please note: Benefits eligibility, specific offerings, and coverage vary based on the country and employment status. While specific benefits vary, here are some of the ways we strive to take care of our eligible team members globally: Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance | Commute subsidy | Employee stock ownership | Competitive retirement/pension plans | Generous vacation and personal days | Support for new parents through leave and family-care programs | Office food snacks | Mental Health and Wellbeing programs and support | Employee Resource Groups | Global Employee Assistance Program | Training and development programs | Volunteering and donation matching program

Life at Unity

Unity [NYSE: U] is the world’s leading game engine, powering play for more than 3 billion consumers each month. The top mobile games in the world, the most played PC indie titles, the most innovative console games, and virtually all of the top XR and Web Games are developed, deployed, and grown in Unity. Unity also enables teams across industries like automotive, manufacturing, and healthcare to design, simulate, and collaborate in 3D — closing the gap between ideas and reality. For more information, please visit www.unity.com.

Unity is a proud equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment and celebrate our employees across age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law. Our differences are strengths that enable us to support the growing and evolving needs of our customers, partners, and collaborators. If you have a disability that means there are preparations or accommodations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience,

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English.

Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this Web site or directly to managers. Unity does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes. Unity will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Unity.

Your privacy is important to us. Please take a moment to review our Prospect and Applicant Privacy Policies. Should you have any concerns about your privacy, please contact us at [e-mail].