Agency:TMA
Job Function:Technology
Job Subfunction: Engineering
Job Description:As a
Principal Engineer at dotdotdash, you are the most senior individual-contributor (IC) engineer in the Creative Technology stream-the person the team turns to when the experiential problem is hardest and the craft bar is highest. You go deep where it matters: solving the toughest problems in real-time three-dimensional (3D), installations, and hardware, prototyping brand-new capabilities, and setting the standards that make our immersive and interactive work great.
This is a technical-authority role, not a management one. You have deep expertise across real-time graphics, creative technology, physical computing, and the systems behind live experiences, and you use it to raise the whole studio's experiential work-mentoring engineers across teams, reviewing critical technical decisions, and proving out what's next before it hits a show floor. You lead through the quality of your work and your judgment, not through direct reports.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:- Solve the hardest technical problems across the studio's experiential projects, from real-time rendering and performance to complex hardware and on-site integration.
- Set and evolve technical standards, patterns, and best practices that raise craft and consistency across the Creative Technology team.
- Prototype and prove out new capabilities-new platforms, frameworks, interaction techniques, and tooling-before they reach production or a live show.
- Serve as a deep technical authority, making high-stakes architecture and implementation calls on the most critical experiential work.
- Review critical technical decisions and code across teams, raising the bar without ego.
- Mentor engineers and creative technologists across the organization, growing technical depth and spreading hard-won knowledge.
- Partner with the Technology Director, Creative Technology to pressure-test approach and de-risk the toughest parts of a build.
- Build reusable components, libraries, and internal tools that make the whole team faster and the work more reliable.
- Champion real-time performance, reliability, and on-site resilience at the deepest level, profiling and optimizing where it counts.
- Own research and development into emerging technology and creative artificial intelligence (AI), turning promising ideas into proven, usable capabilities.
- Contribute hands-on to the most demanding builds, shipping high-craft, production-quality real-time and installation code.
- Advise pitches and proposals on the feasibility and effort of genuinely novel creative-technology work.
- Document architectures, patterns, and learnings so the studio compounds its technical knowledge over time.
- Foster a culture of experimentation, play, and continuous learning across the engineering organization.
QUALIFICATIONS: - 10+ years of hands-on experience building interactive, immersive, or installation-based technology.
- Recognized depth in one or more core areas-real-time and web graphics (WebGL, three.js, shaders), creative technology, physical computing, or hardware and audio-visual (AV) systems.
- A track record of solving hard technical problems and shipping high-craft, production-quality experiential work.
- Strong architecture and systems-design judgment, with deep instincts for real-time performance, reliability, and on-site resilience.
- A history of setting technical standards and patterns that other engineers adopt.
- Proven ability to prototype and prove out new capabilities quickly under uncertainty.
- A track record of mentoring engineers and technologists and raising the technical bar across teams.
- Fluency with emerging technology and creative artificial intelligence (AI), and a point of view on where each creates value in experiences.
- A portfolio or body of work demonstrating shipped, high-craft interactive, immersive, or installation experiences.
- Agency, studio, or experiential-production background is strongly preferred.
As part of Omnicom Advertising Group, we combine boutique service and craft with the reach and resources of a global network.
$200000 - $240000
To the extent permissible by local law, Omnicom's policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager.
