Staff Backend Engineer, Vector AI

LE130 Unity Technologies SF; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 193,000 - 318,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Stock ownership

Retirement plans

Vacation and personal days

Parental leave

Office snacks

Mental health programs

Employee Resource Groups

Global Employee Assistance Program

Training and development programs

Volunteer matching program

Job summary

Unity Technologies is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to design, build, and operate distributed systems powering large-scale model inference in the Vector Gamer AI team. You will focus on low-latency, high-throughput backend services and cloud infrastructure on GCP, with Kubernetes across a high-scale production environment.

You will collaborate with ML engineers to scale inference workloads, implement observability with Prometheus and Grafana, and promote DevOps/SRE practices to improve

Qualifications

• 5+ years designing distributed systems at scale.
• Expertise in Golang for high-performance backend infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience with GCP and Kubernetes.
• Strong grounding in monitoring and observability with Prometheus and Grafana.
• Experience in ad tech, recommender systems, or real-time personalization.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy production-grade backend services and distributed systems powering large-scale online model inference.
• Drive technical direction of the inference platform with focus on low-latency, high-throughput serving infrastructure.
• Partner with ML engineers to scale online serving infrastructure with growing model complexity and inference volumes.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and efficiency using monitoring/observability tools.
• Manage and optimize cloud infrastructure on GCP with Kubernetes across a high-scale production environment.
• Promote and implement backend DevOps/SRE practices.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Golang

Cloud infrastructure (GCP)

Monitoring & observability

Ad tech / real-time personalization

Microservices architecture

CI/CD practices

ML inference platforms

NVIDIA Triton Inference Server

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Prometheus

Grafana

NVIDIA Triton Inference Server

Job description

The opportunity Every day, we connect billions of players with the games and experiences they love. Our Vector Gamer AI team sits at the heart of that mission, governing ad ranking and bidding decisions across billions of daily impressions, where large-scale machine learning and real-world impact converge at scale. We're hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to build and operate the infrastructure those models depend on. You'll design and operate the distributed systems that power billions of daily decisions, with a focus on the performance, reliability, and scalability of inference systems. Join us and help influence how billions of gaming experiences are discovered, monetized, and how creators are rewarded.

What you'll be doing

• Design, develop, and deploy production-grade backend services and distributed systems powering large-scale online model inference at billions of daily requests
• Drive technical direction of our inference platform, with a focus on low-latency, high-throughput serving infrastructure
• Partner with ML engineers to ensure online serving infrastructure scales with growing model complexity and inference volumes, without compromising latency or throughput
• Ensure the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of our systems in production using monitoring and observability tools like Prometheus and Grafana
• Manage and optimize cloud infrastructure on GCP, orchestrating workloads with Kubernetes across a high-scale production environment
• Promote and implement best practices for backend service development, testing, deployment, and monitoring (DevOps, SRE)

What we’re looking for

• 5+ years designing, deploying, and maintaining distributed systems at scale
• Expertise in Golang for building high-performance, low-latency backend infrastructure
• Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure on GCP and workload orchestration with Kubernetes
• Strong grounding in monitoring and observability tooling, including Prometheus and Grafana
• Experience in ad tech, recommender systems, real-time personalization, or other performance-critical domains
• Familiarity with microservice architectures, containerization (Docker), and CI/CD best practices
• Familiarity with machine learning platforms, workflows, and serving infrastructure
• You might also have
• Experience with ML inference servers like NVIDIA Triton Inference Server
• Familiarity with auction mechanics or bidding systems in an ad tech context

Additional information

Gross pay annually: $192,600 - $317,800 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

• 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're 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.

Requirements

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.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Unity is a proud equal opportunity employer. We're 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.