Principal / Senior Software Engineer - Mobile App Monetization (Ad Server)

About the Role

PubMatic is seeking an experienced and technically strong Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and development of next-generation Mobile App Monetization capabilities. This role is focused on building high-performance, low-latency, scalable, and privacy-safe systems that help maximize publisher revenue from in-app inventory while improving DSP and buyer spend efficiency. 

The role requires a deep understanding of mobile app advertising, SSP-DSP RTB workflows, OpenRTB mobile signals, SDK/mediation integrations, traffic shaping, QPS optimization, mobile attribution, privacy constraints, and performance advertising. The engineer will work on systems that monetize mobile formats such as rewarded video, interstitial, native, banner, app-open, playable, and video ads. 

The ideal candidate is a seasoned backend engineer with strong ad-tech domain expertise and experience building real-time auction, targeting, decisioning, and optimization systems. You will work closely with Product, Data Science, Marketplace Quality, DSP Partnerships, Publisher teams, and SRE to build ML-integrated and data-driven monetization systems that improve yield, bid rate, win rate, fill rate, attribution readiness, latency, and reliability across PubMatic’s mobile app ecosystem. 

What You'll Do

• Architect and implement scalable backend services powering mobile app monetization, extracting, transforming, and optimizing in-app behavioral data using on-device computation, data aggregation, and differential privacy techniques so that publishers can still deliver targeted ads and measure performance without accessing persistent, individual user identities. 
• Build and optimize SSP-DSP integration workflows for mobile app inventory, including app bundle validation, device and geo signal handling, privacy-aware user signal processing, bid response handling, loss reason analysis, and DSP-specific troubleshooting. 
• Design mobile-specific traffic shaping and QPS optimization systems that prioritize high-value in-app inventory based on bid probability, win probability, spend potential, app quality, device signals, geo value, ad format, consent availability, and DSP buying behavior. 
• Improve runtime handling for Mobile App ad formats such as rewarded video, interstitial, native, banner, app-open, playable, and in-app video, including format eligibility, creative compatibility, response validation, tracking, completion, and reward-callback correctness. 
• Build capabilities that improve buyer/DSP compatibility for MApp inventory, ensuring buyers receive well-represented, privacy-compliant, format-compatible, attribution-ready, and supply-quality-aware mobile app requests. 
• Develop systems and diagnostics to improve Mobile App supply quality, including app bundle validation, app store metadata checks, app-ads.txt, sellers.json, SupplyChain object validation, app spoofing detection, invalid traffic indicators, device/geo inconsistency checks, and low-quality partner supply detection. 
• Support privacy-aware and attribution-ready Mobile App advertising, including ATT/IDFA handling, AAID availability, consent enforcement, COPPA/child-directed treatment, SKAN readiness, MMP signal passing, click/impression tracking, and privacy-safe fallback when user-level identifiers are unavailable. 
• Partner with MApp SDK and OpenBid/S2S integration teams to define signal-quality standards, request-field expectations, placement/ad-unit semantics, tracking requirements, and partner feedback loops for Mobile App supply. 
• Build publisher-facing and buyer-facing diagnostics for MApp inventory, including missing-field reports, app quality signals, buyer no-bid diagnostics, fill and eCPM diagnostics, tracking mismatch analysis, attribution readiness, and supply-path quality insights. 
• Work with DSP Partnerships and Marketplace Quality teams to improve buyer confidence in PubMatic’s MApp supply by addressing format compatibility, attribution readiness, privacy eligibility, fraud risk, supply transparency, and app inventory quality. 
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science, Publisher teams, DSP Partnerships, Marketplace Quality, MApp SDK, OpenBid/S2S integrations, and SRE to define and execute the roadmap for differentiated Mobile App advertising capabilities. 
• Champion operational excellence for Mobile App advertising systems through strong observability, reason codes, structured logs, dashboards, alerts, safe rollouts, latency protection, production debugging, and cross-team incident response. 

We'd Love for You to Have

• Five plus years of backend engineering experience, with a proven track record of building high-scale, low-latency systems, preferably in mobile app advertising, SSP, DSP, ad exchange, mediation, mobile SDK, app-install, or programmatic AdTech domains. 
• Strong knowledge of mobile app inventory signals, including app bundle, app store URL, SDK version, placement type, rewarded indicator, device ID, IDFA, AAID, IDFV, OS version, carrier, connection type, geo, consent status, and ad format metadata. 
• Familiarity with mobile ad formats such as rewarded video, interstitial, native, banner, app-open, playable, and in-app video ads, including how each format impacts pricing, buyer demand, creative rendering, tracking, and user experience. 
• Strong understanding of mobile performance advertising concepts such as app-install campaigns, CPI, CPA, ROAS, retention, lifetime value, post-install events, retargeting where allowed, and buyer outcome optimization. 
• Experience or strong familiarity with mobile attribution and measurement ecosystems, including MMPs, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular, Firebase, SKAdNetwork, Android attribution changes, click tracking, impression tracking, and delayed/aggregated conversion signals. 
• Strong knowledge of mobile privacy and compliance constraints, including Apple ATT, IDFA availability, Android Advertising ID, SKAdNetwork, Google Privacy Sandbox for Android, COPPA, GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, TCF, GPP, and do-not-sell/share flags. 
• Practical knowledge of mobile supply quality and fraud prevention, including app bundle spoofing, SDK spoofing, device spoofing, geo mismatch, VPN/proxy traffic, click injection, click spam, invalid traffic, app-ads.txt, sellers.json, and SupplyChain object validation. 
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills with a collaborative mindset, strong ownership, and ability to work cross-functionally with Product, Data Science, DSP Partnerships, Publisher teams, Marketplace Quality, and SRE.

Bonus Qualifications  

• Hands-on experience with mobile monetization SDKs, client-server ad request flows, mediation logic, in-app bidding, server-side bidding, waterfalls, or unified auction systems. 
• Contributions to open-source AdTech projects such as Prebid Mobile, RTBkit, OpenRTB tools, header bidding libraries, or mobile SDK/ad-serving frameworks. 
• Familiarity with industry-standard ML model-serving infrastructure designed for real-time inference in high-QPS, low-latency environments. 
• Understanding of mobile user acquisition, performance DSPs, app-install campaigns, MMP integrations, and attribution platforms. 
• Experience working with incrementality measurement, retargeting systems, audience segmentation, cohort-based optimization, or privacy-safe targeting for mobile performance marketing. 
• Exposure to privacy-preserving user ID solutions such as UID2.0, RampID, publisher first-party IDs, hashed identifiers where allowed, and frameworks such as SKAdNetwork for iOS post-ATT monetization. 
• Experience with cross-format mobile monetization strategies, including combining rewarded video, interstitial, native, banner, app-open, playable, and video monetization within the same app session. 
• Familiarity with real-time analytics pipelines used to measure mobile monetization KPIs such as bid rate, win rate, fill rate, eCPM, revenue, QPS efficiency, timeout rate, attribution feedback, buyer spend, and yield efficiency. 
• Publications, patents, internal platform leadership, or speaking engagements in mobile monetization, AdTech infrastructure, RTB optimization, privacy-safe advertising, or ML for AdTech. 

Why Join Us?  

• Work on high-scale mobile monetization infrastructure that directly impacts publisher revenue, DSP spend, and advertiser outcomes across the in-app advertising ecosystem. 
• Help shape the future of ML-powered mobile monetization, real-time ad decisioning, traffic shaping, attribution readiness, and privacy-safe performance advertising. 
• Build systems that improve monetization across premium mobile formats such as rewarded video, interstitial, native, banner, app-open, playable, and video ads. 
• Collaborate with industry-leading engineers, product teams, machine learning experts, DSP partners, publisher teams, and marketplace quality teams. 
• Competitive compensation, performance-based incentives, and strong career growth opportunities in a globally recognized AdTech company. 

AI-Enabled Engineering Mindset:

We value engineers who actively leverage Generative AI tools and IDEs (e.g. GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Windsurf etc.) to accelerate development, improve code quality, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance documentation and debugging workflows. Engineers who demonstrate AI-first thinking using these tools to drive faster experimentation, ideation, and technical execution will thrive in our high-scale, performance-critical environment.

Qualifications:  

• Should have a bachelor’s degree in engineering (CS / IT) or equivalent degree from well-known Institutes / Universities.

Additional Information:

Return to Office: PubMatic employees throughout the global have returned to our offices via a hybrid work schedule (3 days “in office” and 2 days “working remotely”) that is intended to maximize collaboration, innovation, and productivity among teams and across functions.

Benefits: Our benefits package includes the best of what leading organizations provide, such as paternity/maternity leave, healthcare insurance, broadband reimbursement. As well, when we’re back in the office, we all benefit from a kitchen loaded with healthy snacks and drinks and catered lunches and much more!

Diversity and Inclusion: PubMatic is proud to be an equal opportunity employer; we don’t just value diversity, we promote and celebrate it. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

About PubMatic

PubMatic is one of the world’s leading scaled digital advertising platforms, offering more transparent advertising solutions to publishers, media buyers, commerce companies and data owners, allowing them to harness the power and potential of the open internet to drive better business outcomes.

Founded in 2006 with the vision that data-driven decisioning would be the future of digital advertising, we enable content creators to run a more profitable advertising business, which in turn allows them to invest back into the multi-screen and multi-format content that consumers demand.