Sr. Data & Software Engineer

About Ovative Group:

Ovative Group is an independent, full-funnel media, measurement, and creative firm. Leveraging our deep industry expertise, we help brands like Best Buy, Domino's, American Eagle, The Home Depot, Post, Disney, Tumi, Michael Kors, Boost Mobile, and UnitedHealth Group transform their media and measurement programs. The result? Profitable growth that speaks for itself.

At Ovative, we don't just track data, we redefine success. How do we do it? Our proprietary MarTech platform, EMRge helps businesses transform marketing into a driver of sustainable growth. Powered by Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR), our differentiated approach to holistic media buying, planning, and measurement, EMRge is the first MarTech platform to measure businesses holistically. We're all about raising the bar every day, and it shows. Our work has been recognized by organizations like Digiday, Google, Inc. 5000, USA Today, and Search Engine Land.

About the Role:

We are seeking a Sr. Data & Software Engineer to join our rapidly growing product and engineering development team.

Our company specializes in enterprise-level media measurement and optimization across various industries.

In this role, you will take a leadership position within a cross-functional team responsible for creating, optimizing, and maintaining scalable software and data solutions to enhance performance, stability, and scalability. You will play a pivotal role in guiding the team and working closely with internal and client stakeholders throughout the entire software development lifecycle, from concept to deployment.

The ideal candidate will bring extensive experience in iterative development practices, a strong focus on building testable solutions, and both conceptual and pragmatic problem-solving skills. You actively leverage AI-assisted development tools to improve velocity and quality, and you help your team adopt these practices effectively. Your outstanding attention to detail and strong written and oral communication skills will enable you to work directly with business users, understanding their objectives and translating them into technical requirements. As a valuable team member, you will have the opportunity to mentor junior team members, contribute to innovative ideas, and drive the adoption of cutting-edge technologies within the team and foster your own professional growth.

Responsibilities of a Sr. Data & Software Engineer:

• Lead the design, development, testing, and deployment of robust software solutions that meet business and technical goals.

• Lead effort in identifying opportunities for automation with a focus on the operational stability of software applications and systems

• Engage directly with Product Managers and stakeholders to understand their business goals, gather requirements, and translate into detailed, actionable technical requirements

• Research, write and edit documentation and technical requirements, including software designs, evaluation plans, test results, technical manuals and formal recommendations and reports

• Evaluate trade-offs between correctness, robustness, performance and customer impact to ensure we build the right solutions that scale

• Mentor and level up the skills of your teammates through collaboration and by sharing your expertise

• Ensure adherence to and advancement of software and product engineering best practices, including code quality, documentation, testing, security, deployment, and performance.

• Evaluate and integrate new technologies, tools, and frameworks to optimize the software development process.

• Troubleshoot complex software issues and provide effective solutions.

• Provide guidance, mentorship, and contribute to architectural decisions, code reviews, and project direction.

• Foster a culture of continuous learning to keep your team current with emerging technology and software engineering trends.

• Ensure adherence to SDLC and DevOps best practices, maintaining high standards of quality and security across all phases of development.

• Leverage and champion AI-assisted development tools and practices across the team to accelerate delivery, improve code quality, and establish effective patterns for responsible AI-assisted development.

Leverage and champion AI-assisted development tools and practices across the team to accelerate delivery, improve code quality, and establish effective patterns for responsible AI-assisted development.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of relevant data & software engineering development experience

• Highly proficient in SQL, Python, command-line tools, and ETL/ELT pipelines for large datasets, including AI and analytics use cases

• Experienced with cloud platforms and modern AI concepts/tools, such as GCP, AWS, AI/ML APIs, vector databases, embeddings, and retrieval

• Strong attention to detail, communication skills, and a track record of knowledge-sharing and mentoring junior team members

• Direct experience working with business users and clients to understand goals and gather requirements

Preferred:

• Experience with iterative development and Agile best practices, including experience working within SAFe or similar scaled frameworks.

• Experience with AI/ML frameworks or APIs (e.g., OpenAI, HuggingFace, LangChain, or similar) and their practical applications in an engineering context.

• Proficient working with data warehouses and big data tools (e.g., BigQuery, Databricks) for large-scale data processing.

• Experience working with APIs for data retrieval and integration across multiple data sources.

• Experience building and deploying tools, agents, or workflows that orchestrate LLM calls in a production or near-production context.

• Experience working with marketing, analytics and customer data in the context of data engineering or pipeline development.

• Experience creating and owning data/table architecture for a project or product area.

• Experience integrating data models within software and deploying data pipelines in cloud environments.

Pay Transparency

At Ovative, we offer a transparent view into three core components of your total compensation package: Base Salary, Annual Bonus, and Benefits. The salary range for this position below is inclusive of an annual bonus. Actual offers are made with consideration for relevant experience and anticipated impact. Additional benefits information is provided below.

For our Sr. Data & Software Engineer positions, our compensation ranges from $90,000 to $132,000, which is inclusive of a 20% bonus.

Benefits of Working at Ovative Group:

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

Culture:

Culture matters and we’ve been recognized as a Top Workplace for ten years running because of it. We demand trust and transparency from each other. We believe in doing the hard and complicated work others put off. We’re open in communication and floor plan. We’re flat – our interns sit next to VPs, our analysts work closely with senior leaders, and our CEO interacts with every single person daily. Put together, these elements help foster an environment where smart people can support each other in performing to their highest potential.

Ovative is committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can participate and thrive. We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind, including on the basis of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Our policies reflect this commitment—for example, our medical leave benefits are inclusive of same-sex partners, ensuring equitable care and support for all families.

Compensation and Insurance:

We strive to hire and retain the best talent. Paying fair, competitive compensation, with a large bonus incentive, and phenomenal health insurance is an important part of this mix.

We’re rewarded fairly and when the company performs well, we all benefit.

Tangible 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

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