Data Engineer

About Open Intelligence:

We are the Activation arm of WPP Open Intelligence. Our team builds the foundational data infrastructure and high-performance edge services that power WPP’s position in the market. With approximately one-third of all global media spend flowing through WPP, our platform operates at the core of this massive network—deeply integrated and adopted by the largest supply-side partners in the AdTech industry.Operating at our scale presents unique engineering challenges. Our edge services currently handle over 60,000 classification requests per second, while our contextual classification pipelines process 10,000 requests per second. With operations spanning the US, UK, and ongoing expansion into EMEA and APAC, our infrastructure continuously interacts with up to 98% of the population in our active markets. We are an engineering-led team focused on building robust, scalable, and highly reliable systems.

Why we're hiring:

We are at a critical inflection point in our growth and need to scale our engineering team to tackle an expanding set of complex challenges. As the digital ecosystem evolves, we are actively developing and releasing a new catalog of privacy-preserving data products. These solutions are designed to scale advanced targeting capabilities while remaining uncompromising on our promise to protect user privacy.

To support this product evolution, our infrastructure is undergoing massive global expansion. By the end of this year, we will be fully operational across the rest of the EMEA and APAC regions. Concurrently, we are deepening our integrations to support even more of the largest supply-side partners in the AdTech industry. We are hiring because we need strong engineering talent to help us architect for this next order of magnitude in scale—ensuring our systems remain resilient, performant, and compliant as our global footprint and feature set rapidly expand.

Who we are looking for:

We are looking for a Data Engineer who is passionate about solving complex data processing challenges in a high-scale environment. You prioritize strong software engineering fundamentals, algorithm design, and scalable data architecture over strict adherence to any specific framework.

You are comfortable designing, building, and maintaining systems that manage immense volumes of data. While your foundation in data processing is most important, you are likely highly proficient in languages like Python, Go, or Scala, and familiar with large-scale distributed processing engines (like Spark) and containerized deployment (like Kubernetes).

You value modern operational practices—from infrastructure as code (Terraform) and robust CI/CD, to leveraging AI coding assistants to enhance your daily productivity.
Beyond your technical capabilities, you are a strong communicator who can distill complex technical concepts for various stakeholders. You take ownership of the reliability of your pipelines and are motivated by the challenge of operating and evolving a global scale infrastructure.

What you'll be doing:

• Discuss & propose technical solutions, develop & review code following best practices and patterns.
• Collaborate with both our Product organization and analysts and data scientists in Open Intelligence to add new features or changes to existing ones and translate those requirements into reliable, production-level components.
• Contribute to designing and building strong data governance and quality frameworks to ensure data production is accurate and work consistently throughout its lifetime.
• Contribute to identifying and addressing technical debt and inefficiencies within our data platform.
• Stay curious and proactive, explore new tools, techniques, and technologies that can help us move faster and smarter.
• Be happy to share knowledge in dedicated sessions and stand-ups.

What you'll need:

• Strong communication skills, you can effectively explain technical concepts to various audiences.
• 2+ years of experience in data engineering.
• Solid experience with data wrangling in a language such as Python, Go or Scala.
• Proficiency in large scale processing engines and related ecosystems (Spark)
• Experience working with CI/CD, version control, and testing best practices.
• Experience with GCP platform.
• Experience working with infrastructure as code tools like Terraform.
• Experience with containerization management tools like Kubernetes.
• A passion for data, technology, and computer languages.
• Interest in leveraging AI coding assistants and prompt engineering to enhance productivity.

Nice to have:

• Familiarity with AdTech- and/or MarTech data and terminology.
• Experience with monorepo codebase.
• Experience with data privacy engineering technologies and best practices in handling sensitive data.

If you are ready to be at the forefront of the AdTech industry, shaping its future, and driving success for both our clients, we encourage you to apply and join our team.

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

WPP is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong

and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

Who you are: