MissionThis role exists to keep Kargo's in-app advertising reliable, performant, and revenue-ready across a fragmented ecosystem of devices, SDKs, mediation layers, and demand sources. It owns deep technical investigation across the full ad lifecycle - from bid response through rendering and measurement - and helps elevate in-app advertising into a first-class part of Kargo's platform. Without it, creative breaks silently across partners, integrations stall, and in-app revenue leaks through bugs no one can trace.
Outcomes - What Success Looks Like in 6-12 Months- Faster issue resolution: Cut time-to-diagnosis for complex in-app failures spanning rendering, SDK behavior, mediation, and attribution, measurably reducing partner-facing escalations.
- SDK reliability gains: Ship improvements to SDK and rendering infrastructure that improve render success rates and stability across iOS, Android, WebViews, and mediation partners.
- Performance improvements: Deliver latency and efficiency optimizations across the ad stack with quantifiable gains in load time or resource use.
- New integrations evaluated and landed: Partner with Business Development to assess and bring online [X] new vendor or demand integrations, with sound technical recommendations.
- Raised engineering quality: Strengthen code review, testing standards, and AI-assisted workflows so production defects in the rendering path trend down quarter over quarter.
Skills - Core Technical CapabilitiesRequired
- 5+ years of software engineering with significant exposure to mobile app advertising technologies.
- Strong grasp of the mobile programmatic ecosystem - mediation, bidding, SDK integrations, OpenRTB, and ad rendering workflows.
- Hands-on experience with mobile ad creative standards and cross-platform behavior across SDKs, WebViews, and mediation partners.
- Proven ability to debug the full in-app stack, from creative delivery through rendering and attribution.
- Performance engineering fundamentals: latency optimization, scalability, and system efficiency.
- Fluency with real-device QA, inspection and proxy tooling, and production debugging techniques.
Preferred
- Working knowledge of the mobile privacy and measurement landscape and its impact on ad serving and attribution.
- Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Competencies - Behaviors We Like to SeeSystematic Debugging- Isolates root cause across SDK, mediation, creative, and demand boundaries instead of patching symptoms.
- Reasons through ambiguous, multi-party failures where the break could live in anyone's code.
Engineering Craft- Builds for reliability and scale, treating rendering correctness and performance as features, not afterthoughts.
- Raises the bar through code review, testing discipline, and thoughtful use of AI-assisted workflows.
Partner-Facing Judgment- Communicates technical findings clearly to Business Development, partners, and non-engineers.
- Weighs integration opportunities on technical merit and long-term maintainability, not just demand pressure.
Ownership Across Boundaries- Drives production issues to resolution across engineering, product, and ops without dropping the thread.
- Takes in-app advertising personally - treats its reliability and growth as their mandate.
In accordance with applicable federal, state, and local pay transparency laws, the anticipated base salary range for this position is listed below. Actual compensation may vary based on factors such as geographic location, work experience, education, and skills.
U.S Salary Range
$150,000-$185,000 USD
