Lead Full Stack Engineer, Platform

About Ovative Group:

Ovative Group is an independent, full-funnel media, measurement, and creative firm transforming how brands grow. We partner with leading names like American Eagle, Best Buy, Domino’s, The Home Depot, Polaris, and UnitedHealth Group to build smarter media and measurement programs that drive real, profitable growth. 

We don’t just track performance—we redefine it. Powered by our proprietary intelligence platform, EMRge, and our holistic metric Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR), we help brands connect revenue, customer, and brand outcomes into one clear picture of success. Our approach to full-funnel strategy, buying, and measurement delivers results that matter—and it’s getting noticed. Our work has been recognized by Digiday, Google, USA Today, Inc. 5000, and Search Engine Land.

About the Role:

Platform is the shared foundation under EMRge, our proprietary marketing and analytics product suite. We own how people get access, the gateway every request passes through, and the tooling other teams build and ship with to elevate speed and quality in our development teams. We're looking for a Lead Engineer to be the technical leader of this team. 

You'll make the technical decisions for Platform and stay hands-on in the code. You'll also own the infrastructure and pipelines underneath it, and set the standards the rest of engineering builds against. Platform and this role bring governance and speed to our technical organization, and the right person makes the well-governed path the fastest one for every team. 

Responsibilities of a Lead Full Stack Engineer, Platform:

Technical Leadership 

• You make the technical decisions for Platform and own the results. 

• You set the standards other teams build against, and you explain the reasoning so people adopt them by choice. 

• You work with the Engineering Manager and Product Owner on scope and timing. The technical decision rests with you. 

DevOps and Infrastructure 

• You own how Platform gets built, deployed, and run. That covers our GCP environment, the Cloud Run services, and the GKE clusters that run our data jobs. 

• Our infrastructure lives in code, and you keep it there. Any environment can be rebuilt from the repo, and a new service has a standard path to production. 

• You own the CI/CD pipelines and set the patterns other teams reuse for builds, automated testing, and releases. 

• You're hands-on with Kubernetes, including capacity, upgrades, and the day-to-day upkeep that keeps clusters healthy. 

• You build the monitoring, alerting, and runbooks that let the whole team run what we ship. 

Governance and Speed 

• Platform helps the rest of engineering move faster inside clear guardrails. You build the paved road, with CI/CD templates and standard environments that let teams get access and stand up new services on their own. 

• You put strong controls where the stakes are highest and keep everything else light. 

• You measure the results, including request turnaround and how much work flows through self-serve. 

Reliability and Security 

• Platform sits under every EMRge product, so its reliability shapes everyone's experience. You keep our release process predictable. 

• You own the gateway and our authorization services. 

• You keep frameworks and dependencies current, and you work with IT and Infosec to keep our SOC2 evidence in good shape. 

• You're part of the on-call rotation and lead the response when the team needs you. 

Hands-On Delivery 

• You still write code across the Java/Spring Boot services and the React front end, and you take on the most complex work. 

• Your reviews are quick and specific, with an eye toward code that's easy to maintain for years. 

• You make sure code, especially AI-generated code, is understood and owned by whoever submits it. 

Engineering Excellence and Mentorship 

• You make the engineers around you better. Some of that is 1:1 mentoring, and a lot of it comes through how you review and how you explain a decision. 

• Your influence reaches beyond Platform. You help shape how the full-stack community across engineering builds and upgrades software. 

• You help us hire well by running technical screens and setting the bar. 

• You help the team adopt AI-assisted development in ways that speed us up while keeping quality and security high. 

Requirements:

• 8+ years building web applications, including time setting technical direction for other engineers.

• Deep experience in Java and Spring Boot, with sound judgment on design patterns and data structures.

• Strong front end experience in React and TypeScript.

• Solid command of relational databases and microservice architecture.

• Production experience running Kubernetes, ideally GKE.

• Infrastructure as code, such as Terraform, across a major cloud platform.

• CI/CD pipeline design for multiple teams.

• Monitoring and alerting that surfaces real problems.

• Working knowledge of authentication and authorization, such as OAuth/OIDC and Entra.

• A disciplined testing practice that runs from unit tests through smoke tests.

• A record of getting other teams to adopt your technical standards, and the communication skills to explain why they matter.

• Experience turning business goals from product and non-technical partners into clear technical plans.

Preferred:

• Experience managing vulnerabilities and framework upgrades in a SOC2 environment.

• Familiarity with Databricks and Dagster, since many teams rely on Platform for access to both.

• Experience with internal developer platforms or self-service tooling.

• Interest in agentic AI, and a practical view on guardrails for AI-assisted code.

• Background in digital marketing and analytics, or in big data. 

Pay Transparency:

At Ovative, we offer a transparent view into three core components of the total compensation package: Base Salary, Annual Bonus, and Benefits.

For our Sr. Manager positions, including the position of Lead Full Stack Engineer, our compensation range is from $125,000 to $175,000 on an annualized basis, which is inclusive of an annual bonus opportunity of up to 25% of base salary.

Working at Ovative Group:

We provide strong, competitive, holistic benefits that understand the importance of your life inside and out of work. 

At Ovative, culture isn’t a buzzword—it’s the reason we’ve been named a Top Workplace for ten years running. We lead with trust, transparency, and a commitment to doing the hard work others avoid.

We offer flexibility. You'll work from our Minneapolis, Chicago, or New York office on set days each week, and an option to work remote on others.

Our open floor plan reflects our open communication and flat structure—where interns collaborate with VPs, analysts partner with senior leaders, and our CEO engages with every team member. Together, we create an environment where smart, driven people can do their best work and support one another in the process. 

We’re equally committed to inclusion and belonging. Ovative fosters a workplace where everyone can participate and thrive—regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression or other protected class status. Our benefits and policies reflect that commitment, from inclusive medical leave coverage for same-sex spouses to equitable care and support for all families. 

Benefits: 

We strive to hire and retain the best talent by offering fair, competitive compensation, a meaningful bonus program, and excellent health coverage. When the company performs well, we all benefit. 

Some tangible benefits and amenities we enjoy:

• Access to all office spaces in MSP, NYC, and CHI  

• Frequent, paid travel to our Minneapolis headquarters for company events, team events, and in-person collaboration with teams

• Generous paid vacation policy  

• 401k match program  

• Top-notch health insurance options, inclusive of same sex partners 

• Family formation benefits including reimbursement options for fertility, pregnancy, and parenting needs 

• Monthly stipend for your mobile phone and data plan  

• Sabbatical program  

• Charitable giving via our time and a financial match program  

• Shenanigan’s Day  

Additional information can be found at Ovative's Career Page.

The details of the benefits are covered by applicable plan documents for group benefits and by company policies where a plan document does not apply.

Working at Ovative won’t be easy—but if you like challenging, hard work, driving results, and being surrounded by the best talent, it has the potential to be the most rewarding job you’ll ever have. If you think you can make us better, we want to hear from you! 

EEO & Accessibility: 

Ovative is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to a respectful, inclusive workplace for all. Applicants receive consideration without regard to legally protected characteristics (e.g., color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity/, gender expression, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, marital/ status, familial status, military or veteran’s status, genetic information, status with regard to public assistance, and any other status protected under applicable law). 

We provide reasonable accommodations consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act and applicable state law to qualified applicants and employees with disability, unless doing so would create an undue hardship.

If you need assistance or accommodation at any stage of the application or interview process due to a disability, please contact us at [email protected]. 

Application Details and Process:

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer on a full-time basis, without current or future need for visa sponsorship. Ovative is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this position. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification documentation upon hire.

Open Until Filled or Otherwise Withdrawn:

We encourage interested candidates to apply early. The position will remain open for at least 10 business days from the first day of posting. After this time, if the position has not been filled, the posting will remain open until the position is filled, or until the posting is otherwise closed or withdrawn for business reasons.