FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, we're making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. As a global company, we have offices in nine countries and can insert advertisements around the world.
Job SummaryFreeWheel's Programmatic Demand team is looking for a Principal Engineer to help define and build the next evolution of our DSP-as-a-service platform that powers FreeWheel DSP, FreeWheel Buyer Cloud, and products like Universal Ads.
Over the next 3-5 years, backend and platform engineering in ad tech will be reshaped by:
Agentic software that can reason over business context, execute workflows, and safely interact with production systems.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) and tool-based architectures that standardize how services expose capabilities to agents.
New expectations around observability, governance, safety, and cost controls for AI-driven systems.
This role is for a hands-on principal engineer who can set technical direction, deliver core systems, and establish the patterns we will reuse across Buyer Cloud and our broader Demand platform as we build and deploy our first MCP server.
Job DescriptionCore Responsibilities- Collaborates with project stakeholders to identify product and technical requirements. Conducts analysis to determine integration needs.
- Designs and oversees new software and web applications, supports applications under development and customizes current applications. Develops software update processes for existing applications. Assists and oversees in the roll-out of software releases.
- Trains and mentors software development engineers on internally developed software applications and software development best practices.
- Oversees the researching, writing and editing of documentation and technical requirements, including software designs evaluation plans, test results, technical manuals and formal recommendations and reports.
- Keeps current with technological developments within the industry. Monitors and evaluates competitive applications and products. Reviews literature, patents and current practices relevant to the solution of assigned projects.
- Provides technical leadership throughout the design process and provides guidance with regards to practices, procedures and techniques. Serves as a guide and mentor for junior level Software Development Engineers.
- Assists in tracking; provides and evaluates performance metrics. Ensures team delivers software on time, to specification and within budget.
- Works with Quality Assurance team to determine if applications fit specification and technical requirements. Tests and evaluates systems, subsystems and components.
- Leads project planning, resourcing, requirement analyzing and defining, detailed designing and deployment of feature or system.
- Presents and defends architectural, design and technical choices to internal and external audiences.
- Consistent exercise of independent judgment and discretion in matters of significance.
- Regular, consistent and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends, variable schedule(s) and overtime as necessary.
- Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.
Key Job Responsibilities - Collaborates with project stakeholders to identify product and technical requirements. Conducts analysis to determine integration needs.
- Designs and oversees new software and web applications, supports applications under development, and customizes current applications. Assists and oversees in the roll-out of software releases.
- Trains and mentors software engineers on internally developed software applications and software development best practices.
- Oversees the researching, writing, and editing of documentation and technical requirements, including software designs, evaluation plans, test results, technical manuals, and formal recommendations and reports.
- Keeps current with technological developments within the industry. Monitors and evaluates competitive applications and products. Reviews literature, patents, and current practices relevant to the solution of assigned projects.
- Provides technical leadership throughout the design process and provides guidance with regards to practices, procedures and techniques. Serves as a guide and mentor for junior level Software Development Engineers.
- Assists in tracking; provides and evaluates performance metrics. Ensures team delivers software on time, to specification and within budget.
- Works with Quality Assurance team to determine if applications fit specification and technical requirements. Tests and evaluates systems, subsystems and components.
- Leads project planning, resourcing, requirement analyzing and defining, detailed designing and deployment of feature or system.
- Presents and defends architectural, design and technical choices to internal and external audiences.
- Consistent exercise of independent judgment and discretion in matters of significance.
What You'll Do Platform & Architecture Leadership
- Define the technical vision for Buyer Cloud's next-generation backend, including how we expose platform capabilities through APIs and MCP-based tool surfaces.
- Lead architecture and design for large-scale, distributed systems with a focus on low latency, high throughput, and operational simplicity.
- Establish durable platform patterns for:
- Multi-tenant isolation and policy enforcement
- Safe rollout strategies (feature flags, canaries, progressive delivery)
- Backward compatibility and API versioning for internal and external consumers
Agentic & AI-Ready Backend Systems
- Design and implement systems that allow AI agents to safely take actions (e.g., configuration changes, diagnostics, workflow execution) with:
- Clear authorization boundaries
- Auditing and traceability
- Rate limiting and cost controls
- Guardrails to prevent unsafe or unintended actions
- Partner with data, ML, and product stakeholders to identify "high leverage" agent use cases in a DSP-as-a-service environment (e.g., troubleshooting, campaign setup assistance, forecasting/insight workflows, operational automation).
Reliability, Observability, and Performance
- Raise the bar on SLO-driven reliability and operational practices (incident response, postmortems, automation, on-call health).
- Champion best-in-class observability: metrics, tracing, structured logging, and actionable alerting.
- Drive performance engineering across critical paths (bidding/decisioning adjacent services, pacing, reporting pipelines, and platform APIs).
Mentorship & Technical Culture
- Mentor and grow senior engineers and emerging technical leaders.
- Set and model expectations for design docs, decision logs, code review quality, and pragmatic engineering judgment.
- Collaborate across teams to align roadmaps and unblock delivery.
Successful Engineers at FreeWheel Value - An ethic of service and a belief in putting the customer first.
- Pragmatism about what must be correct now versus what must be correct later.
- Curiosity and a builder mindset, especially in rapidly evolving technical areas.
- Repeatability, resilience, observability, and operational simplicity.
- Clear communication and strong partnership across engineering, product, and business stakeholders.
Minimum Qualifications - Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- 15+ years building and operating scalable, distributed systems; ad tech / media / programmatic experience strongly preferred.
- Deep expertise in system design and technical architecture, including ownership of complex systems in production.
- Strong coding ability in one or more of: Python, Java, Go, C++ (performance, concurrency, and distributed computing).
- Experience building and operating cloud-native services on AWS (or equivalent) including infrastructure-as-code.
- Demonstrated ability to own and manage technical backlogs, influence prioritization, and drive execution across multiple teams.
AI / Agentic Systems Experience (Strongly Preferred) - Experience designing "tooling" APIs intended for automation (human and machine clients), including careful consideration of:
- Failure modes and safe retries
- Familiarity with modern AI/agent patterns (tool calling, RAG, evaluation/monitoring), and a point of view on where agentic systems will and will not work in production.
- Experience (or strong interest) in standards and ecosystems like MCP, and how they change service boundaries and platform ergonomics.
Successful Engineers at FreeWheel Value: - An ethic of service and a belief in putting the customer first
- A powerful sense of pragmatism to figure out what needs to be done right versus right now.
- A curiosity about technology and a desire to use it to solve problems in all sorts of domains.
- An openness to feedback and more than just the spelling skills to know that there's no I in "team."
- An appreciation of repeatability, resilience, observability, and operational simplicity.
Minimum Qualifications and Requirements - A bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 15+ years of experience as a hands-on software engineer, with a deep focus on designing and building scalable, distributed systems. Experience in the media or advertising technology industry is a must-have.
- Proven expertise in technical architecture and system design, with the ability to break down complex problems and deliver elegant, maintainable solutions.
- Demonstrated ability to own and manage technical backlogs, collaborating with product and engineering peers to prioritize work, define technical requirements, and drive execution.
- Advanced proficiency in object-oriented and systems programming languages such as C++, Java, Python, or Go with a strong understanding of concurrency, performance tuning, and distributed computing.
- Experience deploying and operating applications in public cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure), with a solid grasp of cloud-native development patterns and infrastructure-as-code.
- Comfortable using engineering productivity tools such as Jira (for backlog and sprint planning), Confluence (for technical documentation), Git (for version control), and Microsoft Office Suite (for communication and reporting).
Employees at all levels are expected to:- Understand our Operating Principles; make them the guidelines for how you do your job.
- Own the customer experience - think and act in ways that put our customers first, give them seamless digital options at every touchpoint, and make them promoters of our products and services.
- Know your stuff - be enthusiastic learners, users and advocates of our game-changing technology, products and services, especially our digital tools and experiences.
- Win as a team - make big things happen by working together and being open to new ideas.
- Be an active part of the Net Promoter System - a way of working that brings more employee and customer feedback into the company - by joining huddles, making call backs and helping us elevate opportunities to do better for our customers.
- Drive results and growth.
- Support a culture of inclusion in how you work and lead.
- Do what's right for each other, our customers, investors and our communities.
Working conditions Principal Engineer must successfully work with team members located in multiple remote locations and time zones. Working conditions agree with conditions described within FreeWheel's company handbook unless explicitly noted in this document.
Location Denver, CO or Chicago, IL.
Disclaimer:- This information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees in this role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications.
SkillsApplication Deployment, C++ Programming Language, Cloud Applications, Python (Programming Language), Systems Design, Technical Architecture Design
CompensationPrimary Location Pay Range: $180,337.97 - $270,506.96
This job can be performed in Denver Campus with a Pay Range of $176,540.60 - $277,420.95
Comcast intends to offer the selected candidate base pay within this range, dependent on job-related, non-discriminatory factors such as experience. The application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later.
Base pay is one part of the Total Rewards that Comcast provides to compensate and recognize employees for their work. Most sales positions are eligible for a Commission under the terms of an applicable plan, while most non-sales positions are eligible for a Bonus. Additionally, Comcast provides best-in-class Benefits to eligible employees. We believe that benefits should connect you to the support you need when it matters most, and should help you care for those who matter most. That's why we provide an array of options, expert guidance and always-on tools, that are personalized to meet the needs of your reality - to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. Please visit the compensation and benefits summary on our careers site for more details.
EducationBachelor's Degree
While possessing the stated degree is preferred, Comcast also may consider applicants who hold some combination of coursework and experience, or who have extensive related professional experience.
Certifications (if applicable)
Relevant Work Experience15 Years +
Comcast is an equal opportunity workplace. We will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
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