Staff Software Engineer (Data & ML)

Unity; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 278,100 - 417,100; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance

Commute subsidy

Employee stock ownership

Generous vacation and personal days

Mental Health and Wellbeing programs

Job summary

Unity is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join their Ads team in Mountain View, California. This role focuses on building scalable data pipeline systems that support machine learning and performance optimization.

The ideal candidate will have a deep understanding of distributed systems and hands-on experience with ETL/ELT pipelines. Unity offers comprehensive benefits and values an inclusive work environment.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Hands-on experience with building production-grade ETL/ELT pipelines using relevant technologies.
• Strong ownership mindset focused on correctness and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate scalable, production-grade data pipeline systems.
• Own end-to-end offline data flows ensuring correctness and SLA compliance.
• Drive improvements in observability and quality standards across the platform.

Skills

Distributed systems

Data pipeline systems

Python

Java

SQL

Kubernetes

ETL/ELT pipelines

Tools

Spark

Flink

Go

Job description

The opportunity

At Unity, we're building a world-class advertising platform that operates at a massive global scale. The Ads team powers the systems that connect advertisers with creators and players, driving performance, reliability, and growth across our ecosystem.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Feature Platform team, you'll play a critical role in building the infrastructure that powers machine learning, experimentation, and optimization across our ads ecosystem. You'll design and operate the systems that transform high-volume event data into production-grade feature datasets used for bidding, attribution, and ranking — working at the intersection of distributed systems, platform engineering, and ML infrastructure.

This role goes beyond data processing. You'll own the full software lifecycle of pipeline systems — from architecture and implementation through to reliability, observability, and performance at scale — collaborating closely with ML, backend, and product teams to build durable, high-quality infrastructure that supports both offline training workflows and online feature serving.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys owning complex systems end-to-end, thinking deeply about correctness and scalability, and building software that other engineering teams depend on.

What You'll Be Doing

• Design, build, and operate scalable, production‑grade data pipeline systems and curated feature datasets powering ads optimization and ML
• Own end-to-end offline data flows from raw event ingestion to feature‑ready datasets, with strong emphasis on correctness, reproducibility, and SLA compliance
• Develop and maintain large‑scale batch and streaming systems (Python / Java / SQL) with a strong focus on performance, cost‑efficiency, and reliability
• Build and contribute to our Feature Store platform, including integration with the high‑throughput online serving layer (Go‑based services)
• Translate complex product and monetization logic into well‑engineered, extensible systems serving analytics and machine learning use cases
• Drive improvements in observability, testing frameworks, and quality standards across the platform
• Lead architectural decisions and engineering best practices within the Feature Platform team

What We're Looking For

• Strong software engineering fundamentals with deep experience designing and operating large‑scale distributed systems in production
• Hands‑on experience building production‑grade ETL/ELT pipelines using Python, Java, SQL, or similar technologies
• Experience with distributed processing frameworks such as Spark or Flink in both batch and streaming modes, including performance tuning and parallel computation
• Understanding of how offline data systems integrate with online serving layers — feature stores, low‑latency APIs, and real‑time systems
• Experience with cloud‑native environments, containerized systems, Kubernetes, and workflow orchestration tools
• Strong ownership mindset — focused on correctness, observability, and long‑term maintainability
• Experience with Go is a plus, particularly for collaboration on high‑throughput feature serving services

You might also have

• Experience with ML infrastructure, feature stores, or model training pipelines
• Background in ads, attribution, or monetization systems
• Familiarity with experimentation and metrics infrastructure
• Exposure to high‑scale backend or platform engineering

Additional Information

• Relocation support is not available for this position

278,100.00 - 417,100.00

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 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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