Senior Software Engineer (Python, Java, C++, or GoLang) - Chicago, IL- ONSITE 2X Week- FreeWheel

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, we're making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. As a global company, we have offices in nine countries and can insert advertisements around the world.
Job Summary
The Software Engineering for Audience and Measurement (SEAM) team builds the audience, identity, and measurement services that help advertisers and publishers reach the right people and understand campaign performance. The team delivers identity resolution, audience segmentation, and privacy-preserving measurement solutions at scale, enabling more effective targeting, optimized spend, and clear insights into advertising impact. We are looking for a Sr Software Engineer that will lead the technical design and delivery of complex software solutions. These initiatives will encompass automation, analytics, and cloud optimization objectives and span multiple engineering teams. Reporting to the Sr. Manager of Software Development & Engineering, you will remain a hands-on individual contributor, partnering with Engineering, Finance, Product, Architecture, Data, Platform, and SRE. You will translate ambiguous efficiency goals into reliable solutions, guide technical decisions, and validate improvements in unit cost, developer productivity, reliability, and infrastructure. You will promote peer growth by providing technical leadership to more junior engineers, without direct people-management responsibility.
Job Description
Core Responsibilities

• Independently lead complex optimization initiatives from problem definition and technical design through implementation, rollout, and outcome validation. Coordinate dependencies across teams, escalating material risks to appropriate stakeholders.

• Architect and build reusable software, data pipelines, dashboards, and automation; connecting cloud spend, resource utilization, unit economics, reliability, and engineering productivity across services.

• Partner with engineering and finance leadership, to define baselines, success measures, cost-benefit assumptions, and delivery options; validate realized savings, distinguishing recurring savings from cost avoidance.

• Diagnose systemic inefficiencies across distributed services and data platforms; lead improvements in compute, storage, data movement, capacity, and workload placement. Execute against the aforementioned goals; simultaneously ensuring platform performance and stability.

• Design and productionize AI- and analytics-enabled forecasting, anomaly detection, and operational automation. Evaluate accuracy, operating cost, security, and human oversight before scaling adoption.

• Contribute to the design and delivery of scalable, available, secure, and maintainable services using cloud-native patterns, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, automated testing, and observability.

• Own the technical quality of integrations between engineering telemetry, billing, financial planning, and reporting. Establish data contracts, reconciliation checks, lineage, and auditable metric definitions.

• Support capacity planning, cost allocation, tagging, chargeback, and forecasting processes that improve financial accountability and budget accuracy across engineering teams.

• Develop automated unit and integration tests, troubleshoot production and data-quality issues, and ensure solutions adhere to engineering, security, compliance, and operational standards.

• Mentor (more) junior engineers through design guidance, code reviews, and technical coaching; coordinate technical work on shared initiatives and promote adoption of reusable solutions.

• Communicate technical recommendations, delivery risks, financial assumptions, and measured outcomes to engineering and business stakeholders; identify follow-on opportunities and recommend priorities to Management

• Stay current on cloud cost-management practices, AI capabilities, data platforms, and engineering productivity tools; prototype and evaluate technologies that can improve operational efficiency.
• Consistent exercise of independent judgment and discretion in matters of significance.
• Regular, consistent and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends, variable schedule(s) as necessary.
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

The Ideal Skillset:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Finance, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Typically, 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience using languages such as Python, Go, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Rust, or Scala.

• Demonstrated ability to independently turn ambiguous business objectives into technical designs, phased delivery plans, and measurable outcomes across multiple services or teams.

• Deep experience with at least one major cloud provider-AWS, Azure, GCP, or OCI-and demonstrated application of billing, utilization, allocation, and capacity data to cloud optimization decisions.

• Proficiency designing and operating cloud-native services with CI/CD, automated testing, and infrastructure as code using tools such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, or equivalent technologies.

• Experience with microservices, containers, and orchestration platforms such as Docker, Kubernetes, EKS, or OKE.

• Strong SQL skills and exposure to data and analytics platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Presto, EMR, PostgreSQL, or Aerospike.

• Experience building dashboards, automated reporting, data pipelines, or observability solutions using tools such as Datadog, Prometheus, ELK, Grafana, or business intelligence platforms.

• Ability to analyze technical and financial data, quantify tradeoffs, debug scoped issues, and turn findings into practical engineering actions.

• Strong collaboration and communication skills, including the ability to work effectively with Engineering, Finance, Product, Architecture, Data, Platform, SRE, compliance, and end users.

BONUS POINTS:

• Adtech or Advertising industry experience.
• Experience with FinOps, cloud cost optimization, forecasting, AI-assisted engineering, or advertising and audience platforms is preferred but not required.

Employees at all levels are expected to:

• Understand our Operating Principles; make them the guidelines for how you do your job.

• Own the customer experience - think and act in ways that put our customers first, give them seamlessdigital options at every touchpoint, and make them promoters of our products and services.

• Know your stuff - be enthusiastic learners, users and advocates of our game-changing technology, products and services, especially our digital tools and experiences.

• Win as a team - make big things happen by working together and being open to new ideas.

• Be an active part of the Net Promoter System - a way of working that brings more employee and customer feedback into the company - by joining huddles, making call backs and helping us elevate opportunities to do better for our customers.

• Drive results and growth.

• Respect and promote inclusion & diversity.

• Do what's right for each other, our customers, investors and our communities.

Disclaimer:
This information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees in this role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications.
Comcast is an equal opportunity workplace. We will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
Skills:
Data Analysis; Collaboration; Design
Salary:
Illinois Pay Range: $129,515.93 - $194,273.89
Comcast intends to offer the selected candidate base pay within this range, dependent on job-related, non-discriminatory factors such as experience. The application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later.
Base pay is one part of the Total Rewards that Comcast provides to compensate and recognize employees for their work. Most sales positions are eligible for a Commission under the terms of an applicable plan, while most non-sales positions are eligible for a Bonus. Additionally, Comcast provides best-in-class Benefits to eligible employees. We believe that benefits should connect you to the support you need when it matters most, and should help you care for those who matter most. That's why we provide an array of options, expert guidance and always-on tools, that are personalized to meet the needs of your reality - to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. Please visit the compensation and benefits summary on our careers site for more details.
Education
Bachelor's Degree
While possessing the stated degree is preferred, Comcast also may consider applicants who hold some combination of coursework and experience, or who have extensive related professional experience.
Relevant Work Experience
5-7 Years