Staff Backend Developer, Unity Ads

Unity is seeking a Staff Backend Developer for its Ads team to build real-time systems for a global advertising platform. This role involves working on high-scale, low-latency distributed systems, processing billions of requests daily, and ensuring seamless ad delivery. The developer will modernize legacy tech, optimize performance, and contribute to new monetization features, focusing on security, data privacy, and user experience.

Must Have

• Design, build, and modernise backend services and APIs that support ad delivery
• Work on scalable, high-availability systems used across Unity’s ads ecosystem
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and data teams to deliver new features
• Improve performance, observability, and cost-efficiency of current backend systems, modernising the legacy stack
• Contribute to architectural decisions and technical direction of the platform
• Experience building backend services at scale
• Proficiency in Golang, and relational databases (e.g., MySQL)
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and observability tools (Kubernetes, Ray, etc.)
• Understanding of API design, distributed systems, and system reliability

Good to Have

• Experience in ad tech, programmatic advertising, or real-time bidding systems
• Background with infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform)
• Familiarity with networking, caching, or real-time data pipelines

The opportunity

Unity is looking for a Staff Backend Developer to join our Unity Ads team, where we build the real-time systems that power Unity’s global advertising platform. This is a high-scale, low-latency environment — processing billions of requests daily to deliver fast, relevant ads to players around the world. Our backend infrastructure is designed for reliability and scalability, ensuring seamless ad delivery and optimal performance even under heavy traffic.

As part of the team, you will work on distributed systems that handle real-time ad requests, impression tracking, and user data analytics with strict requirements for uptime and security. You'll play a critical role in optimizing performance, maintaining service availability, and supporting the development of new monetization features for game developers worldwide. Security, data privacy, and a positive user experience are central to everything we build.

You’ll help modernize the legacy tech stack and the core services behind ad delivery, bidding, reporting, and analytics. This is a great opportunity for an engineer who’s excited to work on performance-critical systems, collaborate across teams, and grow in a fast-paced environment, all at a turning point in the company.

What you'll be doing

• Design, build, and modernise backend services and APIs that support ad delivery
• Work on scalable, high-availability systems used across Unity’s ads ecosystem
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and data teams to deliver new features
• Improve performance, observability, and cost-efficiency of current backend systems, modernising the legacy stack
• Contribute to architectural decisions and technical direction of the platform

What we're looking for

• Experience building backend services at scale
• Proficiency in Golang, and relational databases (e.g., MySQL)
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and observability tools (Kubernetes, Ray, etc.)
• Understanding of API design, distributed systems, and system reliability
• Strong collaboration and communication skills in a remote-first team environment

You might also have

• Experience in ad tech, programmatic advertising, or real-time bidding systems
• Background with infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform)
• Familiarity with networking, caching, or real-time data pipelines

Additional information

• Relocation support is not available for this position.
• Work visa/immigration sponsorship is not available for this position