Sr. Software Engineer

Unity Technologies; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 273,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Employee stock ownership

Retirement plans

Generous vacation

Commuting subsidy

Wellbeing programs

Job summary

Unity Technologies in Mountain View is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect and implement distributed data systems that power near real-time reporting at scale.

You will design high-throughput pipelines, migrate legacy components to modern gRPC services, optimize low-latency data access, and own ad-serving infrastructure while collaborating with ML, Reporting, and external partners to deliver timely signals and reliable insights.

Qualifications

• Strong foundation in distributed systems and systems design.
• Hands-on experience building and operating large-scale data processing systems.
• Deep understanding of streaming concepts: exactly-once semantics, watermarking and event-time processing, stateful stream processing, checkpointing and recovery, and backpressure handling.
• Production experience with frameworks such as Apache Flink, Spark, Kafka, or similar technologies.
• Proficiency in Python, Java, or Scala.
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Airflow for stream and batch coordination.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures and distributed infrastructure including Kubernetes, containerization, and cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end attribution pipeline, responsible for high-throughput, latency-sensitive services and streaming pipelines at Unity's mobile advertising infrastructure.
• Build and operate real-time ad event processing, receiving ad interaction events from mobile SDKs, processing terabytes of data, and delivering signals in real time.
• Lead our architectural modernization by migrating a legacy event-handling layer to a modern gRPC-based service with backfill and failover considerations.
• Improve low-latency data services by enhancing the caching and persistence layers across ad lifecycle data.
• Build and maintain critical ad-serving infrastructure including negative targeting, block listing, logging, tracing, authentication, and Kafka-backed caching framework.
• Drive data health monitoring and quality with real-time anomaly detection and batch pipeline jobs producing daily BigQuery datasets.
• Collaborate across ML, Reporting, and external partners to ensure timely and accurate signal reporting and lead investigations when issues arise.

Skills

Distributed systems

Real-time data processing

Python/Java/Scala

Kafka

Flink/Spark

gRPC

Docker

Kubernetes

Airflow

BigQuery

Tools

Kafka

Docker

Kubernetes

Airflow

BigQuery

gRPC

Job description

The opportunity

Unity is building a robust, near real-time reporting platform that powers critical analytics and decision-making across our ecosystem. We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help architect and implement the distributed data systems that drive this platform at scale.

In this role, you'll design and build high-throughput, low-latency data processing pipelines that power reporting used by internal teams and external customers. You'll operate at the intersection of distributed systems, stream processing, and cloud-native infrastructure — ensuring correctness, reliability, and scalability in a high-volume production environment.

This is a high-impact role where engineering rigor, architectural clarity, and production ownership matter.

What you'll be doing

• Own the end-to-end attribution pipeline. You will be a core engineer on the team responsible for getting attribution data right — from the moment a user interacts with an ad to the signal landing accurately in our data warehouse and in the hands of our ML and Reporting teams. This means owning a portfolio of high-throughput, latency-sensitive services and streaming pipelines that operate at the center of Unity's mobile advertising infrastructure.
• Build and operate real-time ad event processing. You will design, build, and operate the online services that receive ad interaction events from mobile SDKs and other partners, process terabytes of data at scale — including enrichments, transformations, and privacy operations — and deliver signals to external and internal partners in real time.
• Lead our architectural modernization. A significant part of your work will be an active migration, replacing a legacy event-handling layer with a modern gRPC-based service. This is greenfield development within a production system, requiring careful design with backfill and failover behavior while preserving data accuracy throughout the cutover.
• Improve low-latency data services. You will improve the caching layer that serves data on every ad request within strict latency budgets, and own the persistence layer that links auction, fill, placement, and gamer identities together across the ad lifecycle.
• Build and maintain critical ad serving infrastructure. You will build and own multiple services that support ad serving — including negative targeting and block listing — across the team's service portfolio. Responsibilities include logging, tracing, and authentication; a Kafka-backed caching framework; health check and readiness probe infrastructure; and Docker-based integrations.
• Drive data health monitoring and quality. You will own real-time monitoring of data health, detecting anomalies, event delivery rates, and data quality signals as they happen. You will also build and maintain the batch data pipeline jobs that produce daily datasets in BigQuery.
• Collaborate across ML, Reporting, and external partners. You will be the team that ML modeling, Reporting, and external partners rely on for timely and accurate signal reporting. When something goes wrong, you will lead the investigation and recovery.

What we're looking for

• Strong foundation in distributed systems and systems design
• Hands-on experience building and operating large-scale data processing systems
• Deep understanding of streaming concepts: exactly-once semantics, watermarking and event-time processing, stateful stream processing, checkpointing and recovery, and backpressure handling
• Production experience with frameworks such as Apache Flink, Spark, Kafka, or similar technologies
• Proficiency in Python, Java, or Scala\
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Airflow for stream and batch coordination\
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures and distributed infrastructure including Kubernetes, containerization, and cloud platforms

You might also have

• Experience migrating legacy systems to modern architectures in production environments

Additional information

• Relocation support is not available for this position
• Work visa/immigration sponsorship is not available for this position
• $210,300-$273,400

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, please fill out this form to let us know.

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.

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