Lead Data & Software Engineer

About Ovative Group: Ovative Group is an independent, full-funnel media, measurement, and creative firm transforming how brands grow. We partner with leading names like American Eagle, Best Buy, Domino’s, The Home Depot, Polaris, and UnitedHealth Group to build smarter media and measurement programs that drive real, profitable growth.  We don’t just track performance—we redefine it. Powered by our proprietary intelligence platform, EMRge, and our holistic metric Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR), we help brands connect revenue, customer, and brand outcomes into one clear picture of success. Our approach to full-funnel strategy, buying, and measurement delivers results that matter—and it’s getting noticed. Our work has been recognized by Digiday, Google, USA Today, Inc. 5000, and Search Engine Land. About the Role: Ovative's client delivery team gets clients live on EMRge and keeps their experience strong after launch. We're hiring a Lead Data & Software Engineer to be the team's technical leader. You set the technical strategy for client delivery, decide where engineering effort goes, and speak for delivery's technical needs with Product teams and senior stakeholders. You stay hands-on where your skill changes the outcome, such as a new integration pattern or a proof of concept that could change how we onboard clients. The team's engineers do better work because of the direction and patterns you set. Responsibilities of a Lead Data & Software Engineer: Set the technical strategy for client delivery and keep a clear view of where rollouts slow down and what to fix first.  Set priorities for making the client-facing platform faster, more reliable, and easier to use.  Partner with Product teams as the strong voice of delivery's technical needs. Turn field experience into clear requirements, shape designs with Product, and push back when a design won't work in the field.  Own architecture for the delivery platform and make the calls on patterns, tooling, and trade-offs, including how the team uses Dagster and Databricks.  Decide which proofs of concept are worth running, lead the important ones, and recommend whether to productize or stop.  Drive fixes for problems that repeat across clients at the system level.  Define the team's engineering standards for testing, security, deployment, and documentation, and model them in your own work.  Mentor engineers through design reviews and direct coaching.  Act as the technical escalation point for the hardest client situations, and represent the team to client-facing and executive leaders.  Evaluate new tools and technologies, including AI development practices, and decide what the team adopts.  Write code on the most critical or ambiguous pieces of work.  Requirements : 7+ years of data and software engineering experience  Expert-level SQL and Python  Deep experience designing data platforms and pipelines at scale  Experience with a major cloud platform, ideally GCP or Azure  Hands-on experience with LLM orchestration, including tools, agents, and workflows  Proven ability to influence Product teams and senior stakeholders and shape what gets built  Experience mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar of a team  Preferred: Experience with Databricks and Dagster  History of taking POCs to production, or of deciding not to  Experience owning data architecture for a platform area  Experience with marketing, analytics, or customer data  Experience on a client delivery, implementation, or professional services team  Pay Transparency: At Ovative, we offer a transparent view into three core components of the total compensation package: Base Salary, Annual Bonus, and Benefits. For our Sr. Manager positions, including the position of Lead Data & Software Engineer, our compensation range is from $125,000 to $175,000 on an annualized basis, which is inclusive of an annual bonus opportunity of up to 25% of base salary. Working at Ovative Group: We provide strong, competitive, holistic benefits that understand the importance of your life inside and out of work.  At Ovative, culture isn’t a buzzword—it’s the reason we’ve been named a Top Workplace for ten years running. We lead with trust, transparency, and a commitment to doing the hard work others avoid. We offer flexibility. You'll work from our Minneapolis, Chicago, or New York office on set days each week, and an option to work remote on others. Our open floor plan reflects our open communication and flat structure—where interns collaborate with VPs, analysts partner with senior leaders, and our CEO engages with every team member. Together, we create an environment where smart, driven people can do their best work and support one another in the process.  We’re equally committed to inclusion and belonging. Ovative fosters a workplace where everyone can participate and thrive—regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression or other protected class status. Our benefits and policies reflect that commitment, from inclusive medical leave coverage for same-sex spouses to equitable care and support for all families.  Benefits:   We strive to hire and retain the best talent by offering fair, competitive compensation, a meaningful bonus program, and excellent health coverage. When the company performs well, we all benefit.  Some tangible benefits and amenities we enjoy: Access to all office spaces in MSP, NYC, and CHI   Frequent, paid travel to our Minneapolis headquarters for company events, team events, and in-person collaboration with teams Generous paid vacation policy   401k match program   Top-notch health insurance options, inclusive of same sex partners  Family formation benefits including reimbursement options for fertility, pregnancy, and parenting needs  Monthly stipend for your mobile phone and data plan   Sabbatical program   Charitable giving