Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Advertiser Growth

Unity; Washington; On-site; USD 166,000 - 273,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health/insurance

Stock ownership

Generous vacation

Commute subsidy

Retirement plans

Leave for new parents

Office snacks

Mental health programs

Employee resource groups

Volunteering program

Training and development

Job summary

Unity is seeking a senior software engineer for the Advertiser Growth team in the United States (Washington). You will design pacing controllers, integrate Generative AI backends for asset creation, and scale an experimentation engine to measure advertiser ROI and marketplace health.

You will build high-throughput billing pipelines with strict accuracy and lead data-driven optimization of spend velocity and performance using experimental results.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in computer science or related engineering field or equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of software engineering, including 3+ years on ads delivery systems.
• Experience building and operating large-scale, low-latency backend systems using Java, Go, or Scala.
• Deep familiarity with budget control systems, feedback loops, or spend-prediction algorithms.
• Proven experience building or scaling experimentation platforms with proper metric design.

Responsibilities

• Design and optimize budgeting/pacing controllers to smooth advertiser spend across time zones.
• Lead backend integration of Generative AI models for automated asset creation.
• Build and scale an experimentation engine with A/B tests and holdouts.
• Architect and maintain high-throughput billing pipelines with high data accuracy.
• Analyze marketplace data to tune pacing and billing logic based on experiments.

Skills

Java

Go

Scala

Budget control

Experimentation

Real-time processing

Leadership

Education

Advanced degree in CS or related field

Tools

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Big data pipelines

Job description

The opportunity

At Unity, we are building a world-class ad-tech ecosystem that connects billions of users with the creators and experiences they love. The Advertiser Growth team is the engine of this mission, ensuring that as our marketplace expands, advertisers have the intelligent tools, robust infrastructure, and rigorous experimentation frameworks needed to scale their impact.

What You'll Be Doing

• Next-Gen budget pacing: Design and optimize sophisticated pacing controllers (PID, probabilistic forecasting) to smooth advertiser spend across diverse time zones and traffic spikes, ensuring optimal delivery and marketplace stability.
• Creative GenAI infrastructure: Lead the backend integration of Generative AI models (Diffusion, LLMs) to automate the creation of high-performing image and video assets tailored to specific campaign goals and formats.
• Marketplace experimentation engine: Build and scale the infrastructure for high-velocity experimentation, including A/B testing, switchback tests, and long-term holdouts to measure the impact of marketplace changes on advertiser ROI and platform health.
• High-Scale billing reliability: Architect and maintain high-throughput billing pipelines that process billions of events with 100% accuracy, bridging the gap between real-time ad delivery and mission-critical financial reconciliation.
• Scientific optimization: Analyze complex financial and marketplace datasets to refine the trade-off between spend velocity and advertiser performance, using experimentation results to tune pacing and billing logic.

What We're Looking For

• Advanced degree in computer science or relevant engineering-related field or equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years working on ads delivery systems.
• Extensive experience building and operating large-scale, low-latency backend systems using languages like Java, Go, or Scala.
• Deep familiarity with building or maintaining budget control systems, feedback loops, or spend-prediction algorithms.
• Proven experience building or scaling experimentation platforms, with a deep understanding of variance reduction, interference/network effects, and metric design in a marketplace context.
• A track record of working on "mission-critical" pipelines (like billing, payments, or clearinghouses) where data precision, idempotency, and fault tolerance are paramount.
• Experience or strong technical interest in building the backend workflows required to serve, scale, and store Generative AI models for creative asset generation.
• Proficiency with real-time stream processing (Kafka, Flink, or Spark) specifically applied to event-based charging and real-time performance feedback.
• A proven ability to lead complex, multi-quarter technical roadmaps and mentor senior engineers in a high-growth environment.

You might also have

• Experience embracing AI as a strategic advantage in engineering, following established best practices for code quality and security.

Additional Information

Gross Annual Salary: $165,600 - $273,400 USD

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.

• 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.

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.

This posting is intended to fill an existing vacancy, and we are committed to providing applicants with updates throughout the hiring process in accordance with applicable law.