Sr Backend & Data Engineer (Ad Factory)

Job DetailsSalary Range: $145,000.00 - $165,000.00 Salary Angel is changing the future of American entertainment and is one of the fastest-growing distributors in America. Our rapidly expanding library of light-amplifying stories has grown 10x in under 2 years. Gone is the old model where the deepest pockets pick the stories we share. Angel restores choice to our 2.5+ million guild members and growing who decide what we produce, what we take to theaters, and most importantly what parents bring to their homes. Check out angel.com/watch ## Opportunity The Growth team builds Ad Factory, Angel's internal platform that powers how we market content to the world. Ad Factory is a full creative-to-launch pipeline: it helps creative directors find the right clips and stills from films, generate copy grounded in real audience reviews, produce templated video and image ad assets at scale, publish directly to Meta (with Google/YouTube on the way), and close the loop by analyzing ad performance to inform what we do next. We're looking for a senior engineer to serve as the team's backend and data anchor. You'll own the infrastructure that ties it all together: the pipelines that move content and performance data into the system, the APIs that connect Ad Factory to Meta's Ads API and downstream consumers, and the data models that make ad analytics fast and trustworthy. This is a high-ownership role for someone who is comfortable optimizing a gnarly Postgres query one day and designing the integration layer that feeds it the next, and who wants their work to translate directly into better-performing content on Angel's platform. ## Why Join Angel? **High-Growth Company:** Angel is one of the fastest-growing media companies in the US, with record-breaking independent theatrical releases and millions of streaming users worldwide. **Massive Impact:** Your work will directly shape how Angel's content reaches audiences, powering the ads, assets, and analytics that drive every title we market. **Extreme Ownership:** We are a team of owners and entrepreneurs. This is your chance to operate like a startup founder inside a fast-scaling media company. **Mission-Driven Culture:** We strive to amplify light in everything we do. Join a team that deeply cares about the stories we tell and the audiences we serve. **Future of Advertising:** Help build the ad intelligence infrastructure that lets a mission-driven studio compete for attention without playing by the old rules. ## What You'll Do Own the backend, data, and infrastructure that power Ad Factory's creative production, distribution, and analytics capabilities. **You will:** **Turn business questions into technical solutions.** Translate product requirements, like "which ads are performing well and why?" or "how do we auto-populate a landing page from audience review data?", into concrete data models and backend features. **Own integrations end-to-end.** Build and maintain reliable connections between Ad Factory and the services it depends on: Meta Ads API, Iconik (video asset management), Monday.com (editor request workflows), our internal video understanding pipeline (VUP), and Snowflake for analytics. **Build ad performance and analytics infrastructure.** Design the backend systems behind ad performance tracking, multi-variant landing page testing, and the feedback loops that feed performance data back into AI-assisted creative decisions. **Design scalable, well-tuned Postgres schemas.** Write and optimize complex queries, indexes, and aggregations that stay fast as ad volume, asset libraries, and performance data grow. **Build and maintain GraphQL APIs.** Ship clean, scalable APIs (Node.js/TypeScript) that serve Ad Factory's frontend and downstream consumers across the platform. **Keep production systems healthy.** Own deployments, Kubernetes operations, Terraform configs, monitoring, and debugging, with a strong instinct for reliability and root-causing issues quickly. **Leverage AI to move faster.** Use coding assistants, automation, and research tools to maximize your own productivity and the team's output. ## What Success Looks Like - Ad buyers and creative directors trust the performance data and AI suggestions in Ad Factory because the infrastructure behind them is accurate and fast. - Ad Factory's clip selection, copy generation, and still suggestion features run reliably, with smooth integrations to VUP, Iconik, and Snowflake. - The Meta publishing pipeline (and future Google/YouTube channels) handles throttling, failures, and scale gracefully; errors surface clearly and resolve quickly. - Landing pages are auto-populated and tested from real audience data without manual intervention. - Ad performance analytics close the loop: the team can see what's working and act on it. - The team ships new features faster because the underlying infrastructure is solid and observable. - You're seen as the go-to owner for backend and data questions on the Ad Factory team Qualifications ## What You'll Need **Data-and-systems mindset.** Comfortable building the infrastructure that connects creative tools, advertising platforms, and analytics into a coherent system. **Strong communicator.** Able to translate product and business requirements into clean technical solutions, and explain tradeoffs clearly to non-engineers. **Proactive problem-solver.** You take ownership of features end-to-end without needing to be told. **Startup comfort.** Thrives in a fast-moving environment with evolving priorities and real users giving real feedback in real time. **AI-forward.** Strong propensity to leverage the best AI tools (coding assistants, automation, research) to maximize productivity. ## Required Experience - Senior or Staff-level experience (6+ years) in backend development - Strong Node.js expertise with TypeScript - Solid PostgreSQL skills: query optimization, indexing, complex aggregations, and performance tuning - Experience integrating third-party APIs at production scale (Meta Ads API or similar advertising platforms a strong plus) - Experience building data pipelines and analytics features - Experience building and maintaining scalable GraphQL APIs - Redis experience (caching, queues, background jobs) - Strong infrastructure and reliability mindset: Kubernetes, deployments, monitoring, and debugging production systems ## Preferred Experience - Snowflake or other cloud data warehouse experience - Terraform or other infrastructure-as-code experience - Cloud infrastructure (AWS: RDS, S3, Lambda, etc.) - Experience with advertising platform APIs (Meta, Google Ads, YouTube) - Experience building or integrating with video asset management systems (Iconik or similar) - Prior experience in media, creator economy tools, or marketing technology - Experience building multi-variant testing infrastructure for landing pages or content - AI/ML pipeline integration experience (prompt orchestration, embedding pipelines, LLM-powered features) - Familiarity with Monday.com API or similar project/workflow management integrations --- ## What To Know **Work environment** Remote team members must have a private and quiet area for working hours in their location. When in the main office, expect a comfortable, air-conditioned work environment. Team members are issued their own desks, but the office is an open, shared space and can be fast-paced and occasionally noisy. **Physical demands** Will need to be able to sit or stand at a desk for extended periods of time. **Position type and expected hours of work** Regular full-time, 40 hours per week. **Travel required** 2-4 onsite events in Utah each year. There may be other opportunities to travel, but no other significant out-of-state travel is anticipated. **Work authorization** Must be authorized to work in the United States. **EEO statement** At Angel, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and teammates. **Other duties** Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the team member for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice