Senior Software Engineer - Identity

Samba is a media intelligence company. We know what the world is watching, reading, and thinking about — in real time, at scale, across every screen. Our data exists with the consent of over a billion people, organized into the most complete picture of consumer attention ever built. The biggest brands in the world use that picture to make smarter decisions. We think it’s the most interesting data asset on the planet, because it’s the most culturally relevant.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Identity team in Amsterdam. The Identity team builds and operates the core systems that power Samba cross-device identity resolution, data onboarding, and distribution capabilities, the foundational layer connecting data to advertisers, agencies, data partners, and internal product teams.

You will architect and deliver large-scale, cloud-native data engineering systems that ingest, transform, and distribute identity-linked data at scale.

You bring 12+ years of experience and operate as a technical authority, setting direction, resolving complex ambiguity, and shaping how Identity systems evolve to support Samba’s expanding product ecosystem. You are a subject matter expert recognized across the organization, drive cross-functional alignment, and are accountable for outcomes that span the Identity domain and broader product engineering.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and operate large-scale data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and distribution of identity-linked data, setting the standard for reliability, accuracy, and extensibility across the domain.

• Architect ETL/ELT workflows using distributed computing frameworks on cloud infrastructure, making and owning the key engineering decisions that shape how the team builds and scales.

• Design and build API-first, platform-grade services that expose Identity capabilities as self-service building blocks, with clear contracts, strong reliability, and ease of integration for internal teams and external clients.

• Define and implement observability, data quality validation, and monitoring frameworks to ensure pipeline health at scale.

• Drive performance optimization, cloud cost efficiency, and platform-thinking across Identity’s systems, ensuring components are reusable and enable downstream teams to build with confidence.

• Own the technical evolution of Identity’s core systems, including probabilistic and deterministic matching, device graph construction, and audience segmentation — driving their reliability, scalability, and long-term direction.

• Architect and implement secure data collaboration capabilities, including clean room workflows and privacy-preserving computation, embedding privacy-by-design across all system development with deep application of GDPR, CCPA, and Samba’s data governance policies.

• Set the technical direction for how Identity systems serve all downstream use cases, engaging product, data science, commercial, and partner stakeholders to ensure alignment and fit for purpose.

• Own technical design and architecture for Identity systems producing clear, decision-driven design documents, contributing to org-level architectural discussions, and driving alignment across engineering, product, and commercial stakeholders.

• Lead code and design reviews, champion high standards for code quality, testability, and maintainability, and drive formal alignment across teams on shared tooling and patterns.

• Mentor and invest in the growth of engineers across the Identity team through structured feedback, pairing, and design reviews, raising the bar for the team as a whole.

• Partner with the Engineering Manager and cross-functional leads on roadmap shaping, technical planning, and systemic risk resolution.

• Own the end-to-end reliability of Identity systems, lead incident response, drive post-mortem a