Senior Data Engineer - Ad Serving

Join Best Buy’s Ad Serving team to help design, build, and operate a next-generation, machine learning–powered Ad Serving platform. In this role, you’ll be at the core of integrating large-scale data pipelines, real-time model serving, and advanced analytics to deliver optimal, high-performance ad experiences.

As a member of the Ad Decisioning team, you will work with other engineering teams across the Best Buy marketing ecosystem to create an integrated, reliable, and scalable system spanning GCP and AWS. Your work will ensure that data flows seamlessly—from ingestion, transformation, and model training to real-time ad delivery decisions.

This role is remote eligible, which means you would work virtually from home or another non-Best Buy location.

What You’ll Do
  • Implement scalable ETL/ELT pipelines to process large volumes of clickstream, behavioral, and ad performance data in real time and batch modes.
  • Build and maintain integrations between the Ad Server, ML models, and supporting systems such as UIs, analytics platforms, and reporting databases.
  • Work closely with data scientists to operationalize ML models for real-time ad decisioning and bidding.
  • Leverage GCP Big Query, Dataflow, Airflow, Pub/Sub, AI Platform and AWS Glue, Kinesis, Lambda, SageMaker, Athena for data ingestion, transformation, and model deployment.
  • Architect cloud-native data workflows ensuring high availability, low latency, and fault tolerance.
  • Work with the operations team to develop CI/CD pipelines for data pipelines and ML model deployments, enabling fully automated testing and releases.
  • Participate in on-call rotation and provide operational support for data pipelines and ML-driven ad serving.
  • Anticipate and solve data architecture and integration challenges before they impact production.

Basic Qualifications
  • Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Data Engineering; or equivalent combination of relevant professional experience and education
  • 3 years of modern development with SQL and distributed data processing frameworks such as Spark
  • 3 years of experience diagnosing and resolving complex, production-grade data and/or model serving issues
  • 3 years of hands-on cloud experience in GCP or AWS
  • 3 years of experience in designing and managing distributed data systems and pipelines
  • 2 years of Python experience
  • Demonstrated experience collaborating with data scientists, product managers, and operations engineers
Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience with high-throughput, real-time Ad Serving systems processing thousands of requests per second
  • Strong understanding of ad delivery, targeting, and performance optimization concepts
  • Proficiency in data orchestration tools (Apache Airflow, Cloud Composer, Step Functions)
  • Deep familiarity with streaming data frameworks (Apache Beam, Kafka, Flink, Spark Structured Streaming)
  • Experience with cloud-native data stores (Big Query, DynamoDB, Aurora, RDS) and caching systems (Redis, Memcached)
  • Knowledge of distributed systems principles—state management, concurrency, messaging, and inter-service data consistency.
What’s in it for you

We’re committed to helping our people thrive at work and at home. Best Buy offers a range of benefits to support your overall well-being and provide support as you need it, especially at key moments in your life.

Our benefits include:
  • Competitive pay
  • Great employee discount
  • Financial savings and retirement resources
  • Support for your physical and mental well-being
Best Buy provides different types of leaves of absence (LOA) and potential pay sources to employees based on eligibility. The length of your LOA depends on your situation, where you live, your full-time or part-time employment status, and federal and state regulations. Intermittent or reduced-schedule leave is also available for certain medical or family care leaves. Paid time off (vacation or PTO) is offered to full-time and part-time employees based on work location, employment status, salary or hourly status (exempt/non-exempt), and years of continued or bridged service.

Certain roles, where market norms demand it, are eligible for various forms of incentive pay to drive performance and offer recognition for achieving financial and strategic results. For more information about our incentive pay plans, including eligibility, please refer to our Incentive Programs Summary.

For more information about benefits, LOA and paid time off, please refer to our Benefits Guide.

About us

As part of the Best Buy team, you’ll help us fulfill our purpose to enrich lives through technology. We bring that to life every day by humanizing and personalizing tech solutions for every stage of life — in our stores, online and in customers’ homes.

Our culture is built on deeply supporting and valuing our amazing employees who make it all possible. We’re committed to being a great place to work, where you can unlock unique career possibilities. Above all, we aim to provide a place where you can bring your full, authentic self to work now and into the future. Tomorrow works here.™

Best Buy is an equal opportunity employer.

Application deadline: Minimum of 5 days from the posting date. You can find that date above the job title at the top of the page.

Position Type: Full time

Back to blog

Common Interview Questions And Answers

1. HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR DAY?

This is what this question poses: When do you focus and start working seriously? What are the hours you work optimally? Are you a night owl? A morning bird? Remote teams can be made up of people working on different shifts and around the world, so you won't necessarily be stuck in the 9-5 schedule if it's not for you...

2. HOW DO YOU USE THE DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

When you're working on a remote team, there's no way to chat in the hallway between meetings or catch up on the latest project during an office carpool. Therefore, virtual communication will be absolutely essential to get your work done...

3. WHAT IS "WORKING REMOTE" REALLY FOR YOU?

Many people want to work remotely because of the flexibility it allows. You can work anywhere and at any time of the day...

4. WHAT DO YOU NEED IN YOUR PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO SUCCEED IN YOUR WORK?

With this question, companies are looking to see what equipment they may need to provide you with and to verify how aware you are of what remote working could mean for you physically and logistically...

5. HOW DO YOU PROCESS INFORMATION?

Several years ago, I was working in a team to plan a big event. My supervisor made us all work as a team before the big day. One of our activities has been to find out how each of us processes information...

6. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE CALENDAR AND THE PROGRAM? WHICH APPLICATIONS / SYSTEM DO YOU USE?

Or you may receive even more specific questions, such as: What's on your calendar? Do you plan blocks of time to do certain types of work? Do you have an open calendar that everyone can see?...

7. HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE FILES, LINKS, AND TABS ON YOUR COMPUTER?

Just like your schedule, how you track files and other information is very important. After all, everything is digital!...

8. HOW TO PRIORITIZE WORK?

The day I watched Marie Forleo's film separating the important from the urgent, my life changed. Not all remote jobs start fast, but most of them are...

9. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A MEETING AND PREPARE A MEETING? WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING DURING THE MEETING?

Just as communication is essential when working remotely, so is organization. Because you won't have those opportunities in the elevator or a casual conversation in the lunchroom, you should take advantage of the little time you have in a video or phone conference...

10. HOW DO YOU USE TECHNOLOGY ON A DAILY BASIS, IN YOUR WORK AND FOR YOUR PLEASURE?

This is a great question because it shows your comfort level with technology, which is very important for a remote worker because you will be working with technology over time...