Principal AdTech Architect - FreeWheel

Comcast • Reston, VA

2d

About The Position

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides advertising platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers, supporting transactions across screens, data types, and sales channels. The Principal AdTech Architect will join FreeWheel’s Enterprise Architecture team, partnering with Product and Engineering to turn business outcomes and client requirements into scalable product designs and technical solutions on cloud-native platforms. The architect will advise Product Management and Technology leadership on technology investments and will develop solution blueprints, product-aligned architecture roadmaps, reference architectures, and extensibility frameworks that support innovation while protecting performance, reliability, security, and cost efficiency.

The role provides architecture leadership across Streaming Hub (SSP/ad server), Programmatic Demand (DSP), Audience/Identity, Measurement, and Revenue Science platforms. It calls for a product-minded, hands-on architect who can guide cloud-native systems, shared platform capabilities, interoperability standards, and modernization efforts. The architect will lead design forums and reviews, document decisions and migration plans, support delivery teams, and mentor architects and engineers. The position also contributes to operational excellence and promotes inclusion and diversity.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software architecture or engineering experience.
• 5+ years leading distributed, high-scale, low-latency systems.
• Experience with relevant distributed-system technologies, including Go, Java, or Scala; gRPC or REST; Kafka or Pub/Sub; and columnar or NoSQL stores.
• Designed or led architectures for ad-serving and SSP platforms, preferably premium video/CTV, including unified decisioning, mediation, forecasting, and yield protections.
• Working knowledge of header bidding, OpenRTB and other deal types, supply-path optimization, and auction transparency.
• Experience building or integrating with DSP workflows, including planning, activation, bidding, pacing/optimization, frequency management, brand safety, and measurement.
• Practical understanding of identity and addressability, including first-party graphs, UID2/PPID concepts, clean rooms, and buyer/seller ID alignment for targeting and measurement; CTV experience is preferred.
• Experience architecting privacy-centric audience and measurement capabilities, including data onboarding, audience building and forecasting, reach/frequency, and outcomes using standardized signals and ID interoperability.
• Experience with Kubernetes in multi-cluster and multi-region environments, service mesh, autoscaling, OpenTelemetry observability, and resilience engineering.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform.
• Strong security and privacy practices, including OAuth/OIDC, tokenization, encryption, secrets management, least privilege, and auditability.
• FinOps sensibilities.
• Hands-on experience with API management and API security standards.
• Proven ability to turn ambiguous business needs into roadmaps, blueprints, and execution plans.
• Excellent communication skills with senior product leaders, engineering, sales, and client-facing teams.
• Ability to mentor and coach teams and collaborate across functions.
• Bachelor’s degree is preferred; Comcast may also consider a combination of coursework and experience or extensive related professional experience.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with multi-cloud architecture.
• Experience with live-event or live-linear ad decisioning, SSAI, or programmatic advertising for live sports or news.
• Knowledge of curated supply strategies and buyer curation tools.
• Working experience with AI/ML and analytics platforms.
• Experience with premium video/CTV ad-serving and identity systems is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the architecture interface between Product and Engineering, translating market and client needs into end-to-end solution designs across Streaming Hub, Programmatic Demand, Audience/Identity, Measurement, and Revenue Science platforms.
• Produce Solution Blueprints, Reference Architectures, and Architecture Decision Records that balance delivery speed with maintainability, platform consistency, and extensibility.
• Guide product-aligned architecture roadmaps, sequencing capabilities to deliver business value and reduce technical debt.
• Provide hands-on design leadership for cloud-native systems, including reliability, observability, security, privacy, and cost controls.
• Shape standards for data contracts, identity, consent, measurement, and programmatic interoperability across buy- and sell-side workflows.
• Lead strategic initiatives to expand technical capability, reduce technical debt, and improve software quality and delivery velocity.
• Establish common practices that help software and systems interact seamlessly.
• Advise leaders on build, buy, extend, customize, and deprecate decisions; facilitate architecture reviews; and de-risk delivery through proof-of-concepts and reference implementations.
• Promote architecture designs that are stable, secure, scalable, reusable, and operable.
• Review solution designs produced internally and by third-party suppliers.
• Apply innovative ideas to business and technology constraints, and champion diversity and innovation.
• Develop strategies and guidelines for cloud governance, technology-stack selection, capability development, and systems deprecation.
• Frame design choices in terms of client value, market differentiation, and time-to-impact; promote reusable shared services and platform patterns.
• Lead design forums and cross-functional architecture reviews, documenting decisions through ADRs and actionable migration plans.
• Balance delivery with modernization, including domain boundaries, event-driven patterns, and data mesh where appropriate.
• Coach and unblock delivery teams, simplify where possible, and document reusable patterns.
• Contribute to measurable operational excellence in availability, latency, quality, resilience, security, and cost, aligned with business SLAs/SLOs.
• Mentor architects and engineers and evolve Enterprise Architecture practices and artifacts.
• Promote inclusion and diversity and support the company’s operating principles and customer-focused culture.

Benefits

• Comcast offers a range of benefits to eligible employees, with options and support intended to address physical, financial, and emotional well-being.
• Most non-sales positions are eligible for a bonus.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal