Principal Data Engineer Ad Serving

Join Best Buy’s Ad Serving team to help design, build, and operate a next-generation, machine learning–powered Ad Serving platform. In this role, you’ll be at the core of integrating large-scale data pipelines, real-time model serving, and advanced analytics to deliver optimal, high-performance ad experiences.

As a member of the Ad Decisioning team, you will work with other engineering teams across the Best Buy marketing ecosystem to create an integrated, reliable, and scalable system spanning GCP and AWS. Your work will ensure that data flows seamlessly—from ingestion, transformation, and model training to real-time ad delivery decisions.

This role is remote eligible, which means you would work virtually from home or another non-Best Buy location.

What You’ll Do

• Design and implement scalable ETL/ELT pipelines to process large volumes of clickstream, behavioral, and ad performance data in real time and batch modes.
• Build and maintain integrations between the Ad Server, ML models, and supporting systems such as UIs, analytics platforms, and reporting databases.
• Work closely with data scientists to operationalize ML models for real-time ad decisioning and bidding.
• Leverage GCP Big Query, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, AI Platform and AWS Glue, Kinesis, Lambda, SageMaker, Athena for data ingestion, transformation, and model deployment.
• Architect cloud-native data workflows ensuring high availability, low latency, and fault tolerance.
• Work with the operations team to develop CI/CD pipelines for data pipelines and ML model deployments, enabling fully automated testing and releases.
• Participate in on-call rotation and provide operational support for data pipelines and ML-driven ad serving.
• Anticipate and solve data architecture and integration challenges before they impact production.

Basic Qualifications

• 7 years of relevant experience with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Data Engineering; or equivalent combination of relevant professional experience and education.
• 7 years of modern development with Java, REST services, and SQL, with some exposure to Spring Boot
• 7 years of experience diagnosing and resolving complex, production-grade data and/or model serving issues
• 5 years of hands-on cloud experience in GCP or AWS
• 5 years of experience in designing and managing distributed data systems and pipelines
• 5 years of Ad Tech Experience
• 3 years of Python experience
• Demonstrated experience collaborating with data scientists, product managers, and operations engineers
• Ability to travel to Richfield, MN 1x per quarter

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with high-throughput, real-time Ad Serving systems processing thousands of requests per second
• Strong understanding of ad delivery, targeting, and performance optimization concepts
• Proficiency in data orchestration tools (Apache Airflow, Cloud Composer, Step Functions)
• Deep familiarity with streaming data frameworks (Apache Beam, Kafka, Flink, Spark Structured Streaming)
• Experience with cloud-native data stores (Big Query, DynamoDB, Aurora, RDS) and caching systems (Redis, Memcached)
• Knowledge of distributed systems principles—state management, concurrency, messaging, and inter-service data consistency

What’s in it for you
We’re committed to helping our people thrive at work and at home. We offer generous benefits that support your total well-being and provide help when you need it most.
Our benefits include:

• Competitive pay
• Generous employee discount
• Physical and mental well-being support

About us
As part of the Best Buy team, you’ll help us fulfill our purpose to enrich lives through technology. We bring that to life every day by humanizing and personalizing tech solutions for every stage of life—in our stores, online, and in customers’ homes.

Our culture is built on deeply supporting and valuing our amazing employees who make it all possible. We’re committed to being a great place to work, where you can unlock unique career possibilities. Above all, we aim to provide a place where you can bring your full, authentic self to work now and into the future. Tomorrow works here.™

Best Buy is an equal opportunity employer.

Position Type: Full time