Accolite

Senior Engineering Manager

Posted On

Dec. 15, 2025

Location

Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Experience Level

10 - 20 Years Exp.

Job Type

Full Time

Apply By

Jan. 31, 2026

Job Description

Senior Engineering Manager – Retail Media On-Site Ad Server

Position Summary

We are seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to oversee the delivery of a new retailer-controlled On-Site Ad Server. This platform is a mission-critical, low-latency advertising solution designed to replace third-party ad servers for Client’s retail partners. The Senior Engineering Manager will lead a cross-functional engineering organization responsible for building and managing the complete ad stack, which includes the Edge Delivery API, Decision Service, SPA Blender, Inventory, Pacing, Machine Learning Ranking, SDKs, and more. This stack supports sponsored products (SPA), sponsored display (SDA), direct-sold deals, and future programmatic demand across retailer web and app properties.

The Senior Engineering Manager will report directly to the VP of Engineering, where they will define and execute the technical roadmap, enforce strict performance budgets (e.g., p95 decision latency ≤150msserver-to-server, 99.95% availability, zero PII leakage), and guarantee seamless integration withinClient’s broader ecosystem. This includes incentives, loyalty, coupons/rebates, off-site DSP, supply chain, and healthcare platforms.

Key Responsibilities

Lead the end-to-end delivery of the On-Site Ad Server MVP within 3–4 months, followed byadditionalphases such as programmatic header bidding, advanced machine learning, and multi-retailer scaling.

Build and guide a high-performing engineering team,comprisingbackend, full-stack, data, machine learning, and DevOps engineers. The team will manage core services including the Edge Delivery API, Decision Service, Eligibility, Pacing & Caps, Inventory, SPA Blender, Creative/Template Service,lightweightWeb SDK, and mobile shims.

Ensure rigorous adherence to performance, reliability, and privacy SLAs: p95 decision latency of ≤150ms, clientrendertime ≤50ms, 99.95% uptime, compliance with GDPR/CCPA and retailer contracts, and zero PII leakage.

Collaborate closely with Product, Data Science, Architecture, and Retail Media Operations teams to prioritize features, define data contracts (catalog, audience, identity, events), and deliver measurable business outcomes such as a 10–20% lift in CTR/CR, a fill rate of at least 95%, and increased revenue compared to legacy third-party servers.

Drive integration with existingClientplatforms (including RCP, Audience Builder & CDP, PIM, Merch Rules, incentives, loyalty, and off-site media) and external retailer systems such as ecommerce frontends, CMS, and catalog feeds.

Promote engineering excellence through best practices such as CI/CD, observability (distributed tracing, golden signals, SLO dashboards), automated testing, safe deployment strategies (feature flags, canary deployments, rollbacks), and infrastructure-as-code.

Oversee management of technical debt and risks, including latency regressions, catalog conflicts, and consent bugs. Lead incident response, post-mortems, and drive continuous improvement initiatives.

Recruit, mentor, and develop top engineering talent. Conduct performance calibrations and foster a culture of ownership, psychological safety, and innovation.

Work with the Senior Architect to define service boundaries,allocateperformance budgets for each service (e.g., Edge <20ms, Decision <60ms), selectappropriate technologies, and design for multi-tenancy.

Represent engineering in executive reviews, retailer pilots, and go-to-market planning. Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Stay informed on the latest trends in retail media, ad-tech, and real-time machine learning to help shape the roadmap and maintain competitive positioning.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor’s orMaster’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

More than 10 years of software engineering experience, including at least 5yearsmanaging and scaling engineering teams that deliver customer-facing, revenue-generating products.

Demonstrated success in delivering high-throughput, low-latency, real-time systems, ideally within ad tech, retail media, programmatic advertising, or e-commerce.

Extensive experience with cloud-native architectures (AWS, GCP, or Azure), Kubernetes/EKS, event-driven systems (Kafka), and big-data/real-time analytics tools (Spark, Druid,ClickHouse, Snowflake).

Hands-onexpertisewith modern backend stacks such as Java, Kotlin, Scala, Go, Python, and integrating machine learning in production (TensorFlow,PyTorch, SageMaker, feature stores).

Strong foundationin agile delivery, DevOps practices, CI/CD (Jenkins, Argo, GitHub Actions), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform,Crossplane), and observability (Datadog,OpenTelemetry, Prometheus).

Experience with privacy-first design, consent management, and compliance (GDPR, CCPA, retailer data contracts).

Exceptional leadership, communication, and cross-functional influence skills, with the ability to present to C-suite and retail partners effectively.

Preferred Qualifications

Direct experience in building oroperatingon-site ad servers, header-bidding wrappers (e.g., Prebid Server), DSP/SSP integrations, or sponsored product platforms (such as those from Criteo,CitrusAd, orPromoteIQ).

Previoussuccess in delivering Sponsored Product Ads (SPA) and Sponsored Display Ads (SDA) with advanced blending logic, density controls, and merchandising guardrails.

Background working with multi-tenant SaaS platforms serving large retailers.

Familiarity with incentives, healthcare data, and sustainability initiatives.

Professional certifications such as PMP, Scrum Master, or relevant cloud credentials are considered a plus.

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