Principal Software Engineer

About Cardlytics + Bridg
Cardlytics (NASDAQ: CDLX) is the industry-leading purchase intelligence and incentives platform. We make commerce smarter and more rewarding for everyone by helping businesses attract, understand, and incentivize consumers through their banks’ digital reward programs. Remember that time you got cash back on a cup of coffee through your banking app? That was us! 

Bridg, a division of Cardlytics, is an enterprise data and audience platform that powers the growth of Retail Media. Using our exclusive offline identity resolution capabilities along with clients’ point of sale (POS) data, we help Retailers significantly expand their 1st party data (identifying unknown customers and enriching the understanding of loyalty members), ensure reporting transparency, and create new monetization opportunities working with their Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) partners. CPG brands and advertisers in turn gain access to verified shopper data across loyalty & non-loyalty customers that powers advanced insights, precision targeting, and closed loop measurement. Join us at the cutting edge as we transform how companies connect with their customers through data.

About the Team

At Bridg, you will be solving complex problems in a business that celebrates innovation and values your contributions. Our platform blends microservices with a massive data pipeline ingesting and transforming tens of billions of point-of-sale transactions from top retailers. You’ll work alongside cross-functional teams to deliver clean, trusted data and actionable consumer insights, waking up each day excited to experiment with cutting-edge tools, cloud services, and modern software practices.

About the Position

Bridg is seeking a Principal Engineer who will be designing and implementing a highly scalable data integration and transformation platform processing a high volume of data under a defined SLA. You will be creating and building the platform that includes ingestion and transformation of data, data governance, machine learning, analytics, and consumer insights.
This Principal Engineer position reports to the Head of Engineering.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement data processing in Snowflake built for high performance and scale.

• Implement robust ETL pipelines in Python (and/or Java) with full test coverage.

• Author SQL and Snowflake stored procedures optimized for concurrency and cost.

• Automate infrastructure with Terraform and codify CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions).

• Mentor senior and mid-level engineers in design reviews, code reviews, and architectural patterns.

• Partner closely with data scientists to productionize ML models.

• Evangelize engineering best practices (Agile ceremonies, retrospectives, documentation).

Minimum Qualifications

• BA/BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

• 5+ years building high-performance, scalable Big Data systems

• 3+ years designing and operating production workloads in Snowflake

• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL, including optimization techniques

• Hands-on AWS experience (EC2, S3, Lambda, EMR, RDS, Redshift)

• Excellent communication skills, with a history of mentoring engineers and influencing cross-functional stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications

• MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

• Experience with streaming frameworks (AWS Kinesis, Kafka, Spark Streaming, Flink)

• Familiarity with search and analytics engines (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch)

• Expertise in ETL workflow management

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and container orchestration (EKS, ECS, Kubernetes)

• Strong grasp of data governance, cataloging, and metadata management

Technical Environment

We primarily use macOS and Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides). While our preferred platform is macOS, we support both macOS and Windows. Familiarity with or willingness to work within this environment is required.

Core Values

Our shared values are the driving force behind everything we do. Across all roles, we are looking for teammates who embody these values:

• Customer and partner first

• Act with urgency and focus

• Integrity with our partners and data

• Accountability even when challenged

• Empowerment over hierarchy

• Growth over comfort

Compensation

At Cardlytics salary ranges are determined based on factors such as role, level, and location. Individual compensation may be determined by relevant skills, experience, education, training, and other role-specific criteria. This salary range will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of the aforementioned factors.The base salary range provided below does not include bonuses and additional benefits.

The annual US base salary range for this role is:

Champaign: $180,000 - $215,000

LA: $195,000 - $230,000

Benefits and Perks

• Flexible paid time off plus company holidays 

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance begins on your first day

• 401(k) retirement plan with company match, plan also includes a student loan debt repayment option

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

• Educational assistance for continuing education 

• Lifestyle Spending Account for physical, emotional, and financial wellness (like gym memberships, home down payments, art classes, park passes, and more!) 

• Complimentary Calm app subscriptions to support employee mental health

As an equal opportunity employer, Cardlytics is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our people bring our products and organization to life, and every unique perspective makes us better. If you can do the job and you’re excited about growing with us as we scale our best-in-class advertising platform, we’d love to hear from you. If you need accommodation in the recruiting process due to a disability, please email [email protected] or inform your recruiter.