Lead Engineer, Back End

Description

About WPP Media

WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients and communities. For more information, visit wpp.com.

WPP Media is WPP’s global media collective. In a world where media is everywhere and in everything, we bring the best platform, people, and partners together to create limitless opportunities for growth. For more information, visit wppmedia.com

About Choreograph: A Leading WPP Media Brand

Choreograph is WPP’s global data products and technology company. We’re on a mission to transform marketing by building the fastest, most connected data platform that bridges marketing strategy to scaled activation.

We work with agencies and clients to transform the value of data by bringing together technology, data and analytics capabilities. We deliver this through the Open Media Studio, an AI-enabled media and data platform for the next era of advertising.

We’re endlessly curious. Our team of thinkers, builders, creators and problem solvers are over 1,000 strong, across 20 markets around the world.

Who we are looking for

Choreograph is seeking an experienced and forward-thinking Back-End Engineer to lead the development of our ecosystem of (primarily) Python microservices. You'll build leading edge capabilities, collaborating with other teams to develop services that contribute to a range of innovative products, with a particular focus on integrating and optimising AI and agentic intelligence capabilities. Your deep understanding of microservices architectures will enable you to operate autonomously, tackling complex problems described in high-level functional terms. You'll be acutely aware of the risks to API integrity and champion a strong separation of concerns. As a leader, you'll guide a team of senior developers, defining processes, shaping architecture, and collaborating on implementation. You'll also contribute to the higher-level architecture of interconnected systems. We're particularly interested in candidates with a passion for Generative AI, LLMs, and agentic workflows, and a desire to build the next generation of intelligent applications.

Skills and Experience

At WPP Media, we believe in the power of our culture and our people. It’s what elevates us to deliver exceptional experiences for both our clients and each other. In this role it will be critical to embrace WPP & WPP Media’s shared core values:

• Be Extraordinary by Leading Collectively to Inspire transformational Creativity.

• Create an Open environment by Balancing People and Client Experiences by Cultivating Trust .

• Lead Optimistically by Championing Growth and Development to Mobilize the Enterprise .
• Lead a cross-functional team of developers.
• Drive the development of architecture for systems you build and maintain, with a focus on AI integration.
• Collaborate with Product leaders to develop and execute roadmaps for services and products, incorporating AI and agentic intelligence strategies.
• Build and deploy back-end services communicating over a range of APIs with other services, including those leveraging language models.
• Write clean, well-designed, and reusable code. Test your code appropriately and collaborate with Developers in Test to create robust testing frameworks.
• Acknowledge and explain the trade-offs associated with any technical decision. Participate in specification workshops to define functional and non-functional characteristics of our systems, including AI-related requirements.
• Demonstrate a solid understanding of separation of concerns, APIs as contracts, and the importance of preventing implementation details and side effects from crossing the API boundary.
• Design and implement agentic workflows and supporting infrastrucuture , including workflow design, tool calling and model evaluation pipelines Collaborate with data scientists and other product teams to develop common services that can support agentic capabilities within our product suite.
• Extensive experience in software development.
• Proven track record of leading small or large development teams.
• Strong familiarity with Python 3 (the primary development language for this role).
• Familiarity with agile development patterns.
• Essential SQL/Database knowledge (including understanding the trade-offs of using ORMs).
• Experience working with and integrating complex external REST APIs. Experience working with one or more of the leading cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Experience with serverless architectures (Lambda, Fargate , Cloud Run, et al.) and a clear understanding of when not to use them.
• Experience with message queues (SQS, PubSub , RabbitMQ etc.) and data pipelines (Kafka, Beam, Kinesis, etc.). Effective team player with excellent communication, presentation, and influencing skills.
• Passion for improving coding and development practices. Experience working with microservices communicating over a range of interfaces.
• Understanding of how the web works, REST APIs, OpenAPI spec/Swagger, GraphQL , and the difference between REST and RPCs. Understanding of TDD, BDD, unit testing, integration testing, and when to use them.
• Familiarity with trunk-based development in Git.
• Experience with back-end web application frameworks (Django, FastAPI , etc.).
• Experience with language models and agentic workflows (e.g., Langchain , AutoGPT ). Knowledge of model evaluation metrics and techniques.
• Google Cloud (Cloud Functions, AppEngine , PubSub , Stackdriver , etc.). Docker, Kubernetes. Typescript, NodeJS, React, Webpack, etc. Java, C#.
• Experience within the advertising/media agency space. Terraform

Life at WPP Media & Benefits

Our passion for shaping the next era of media includes investing in our employees to help them do their best work, and we’re just as committed to employee growth as we are to responsible media investment. WPP Media employees can tap into the global WPP Media & WPP networks to pursue their passions, grow their networks, and learn at the cutting edge of marketing and advertising. We have a variety of employee resource groups and host frequent in-office events showcasing team wins, sharing thought leadership, and celebrating holidays and milestone events. Our benefits include competitive medical, group retirement plans, vision, and dental insurance, significant paid time off, preferential partner discounts, and employee mental health awareness days.

WPP Media is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics . We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office around four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

Please note this is a UK based role and requires individuals to have the right to work in this location

Please read our Privacy Notice ( for more information on how we process the information you provide.

While we appreciate all applications received, only those candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

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