Lead Software Engineer

Title: Lead Software Engineer

Level: Lead Engineer, Data & Technology Solutions

Location: Copenhagen

Reporting to: Director of Engineering

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.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer who thrives on owning backend systems end to end — architecture, delivery, and the people who build them. You care more about sound software design, reliable APIs, and clear ownership than about any single framework or language.

You are comfortable setting technical direction for a squad, mentoring engineers, and turning product roadmap into shippable, versioned contracts. Hands-on when it matters, you design and operate services, partner integrations, and orchestration components in production — authentication, retries, idempotency, rate limiting, and the operational discipline that keeps live systems healthy. You are likely highly proficient in a backend language such as Python, Go, or Java/Kotlin, and experienced with cloud platforms, containers/Kubernetes, CI/CD, and production observability. Interest in infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform), durable workflows, and AI coding assistants is a plus when it helps the team ship faster without lowering the quality bar.

Beyond the technical craft, you are a strong communicator who can explain trade-offs to engineers, Product, and non-technical stakeholders, and align sibling teams on interfaces. You take ownership of reliability and technical debt for the systems your squad runs, escalate blockers early with clear options, and are motivated by growing both the platform and the engineers who build it.

WHY ARE WE 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.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

· Lead an engineering squad: set technical direction, prioritize delivery, run design and code reviews, and grow engineers through mentoring and clear ownership.

· Own the architecture and health of activation and orchestration services — API, databases, partner gateways, internal integrations, MCP and agentic integrations.

· Partner with Product and sibling teams to turn roadmap phases into shippable, versioned contracts — not ad hoc

integrations.

· Drive API integration engineering: authentication, rate limiting, idempotency, retries, partial-update patterns, and runbooks as partner APIs evolve.

· Establish and uphold production standards — CI/CD, testing, observability, auditability, and safe release practices.

· Keep an end-to-end overview of how data flow through activation — what is live, what is in progress, and where dependencies or technical debt block the next phase.

· Contribute hands-on where it matters: critical paths, new gateways, framework foundations (e.g. tool registry, workflow runtime, guardrails hooks).

· Identify and address technical debt deliberately; balance speed with reliability for systems that support live campaigns.

· Share knowledge in design reviews, stand-ups, and cross-team forums; escalate blockers early with clear options.

· Stay curious about agentic orchestration, durable workflows, and AI coding assistants to improve how the team designs and ships software.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

· Strong communication — you explain trade-offs to engineers, product, and non-technical stakeholders and align multiple teams on interfaces.

· 6+ years in software engineering with 2+ years leading engineers or owning a significant technical area (team lead, staff, or equivalent).

· Proven delivery of backend and API-centric systems in production — services, integrations, or platforms at meaningful scale.

· Solid experience building and operating REST/HTTP APIs and event- or workflow-driven systems (durable state, async jobs, or orchestration).

· Comfort owning third-party integrations — auth, errors, versioning, operational monitoring, and partner-driven change.

· Strong proficiency in at least one backend language (e.g. Python, Go, or Java/Kotlin) and sound software design (patterns, testing, code review).

· Experience with CI/CD, Git, and testing — unit, integration, and boundary/contract tests where APIs matter.

· Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and deploying services with containers and Kubernetes.

· Familiarity with infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform) and production observability (metrics, logs, tracing).

· A track record of technical debt and reliability ownership — incidents, postmortems, and systemic fixes, not one-off firefighting.

· Interest in leveraging AI coding assistants and prompt engineering to improve team productivity without lowering the production bar.

NICE TO HAVE

· Experience leading delivery of orchestration, workflow, or agentic systems (tool registries, policy/guardrails, human-in-the-loop flows).

· Full-stack exposure — internal UIs or ops tools (e.g. change logs, escalations) backed by the same APIs you own.

· Familiarity with AdTech / MarTech — SSPs, DSPs, deals, audiences, or campaign activation terminology.

· Experience in a monorepo or large shared codebase with many integration surfaces.

· Awareness of data privacy and safe handling of sensitive data in distributed deployments.

· Prior work on audit trails or decision logs for high-trust or automated systems.

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.