Senior Director of Engineering - ACR

Seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the end-to-end architecture, development, and scale of our Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) platform. This leader will own the full lifecycle of ACR systems from device-side SDKs and embedded integrations to backend recognition systems and downstream data pipelines powering audience, measurement, and analytics products.

This role requires deep expertise in audio/video processing, large-scale distributed systems, and handling large volumes of data. You will lead large engineering teams, drive platform innovation, and build highly scalable, low-latency systems that process massive volumes of streaming media data globally. You will play a critical role in shaping product strategy, data capabilities, and infrastructure for next-generation TV intelligence.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Strategic and Technical Leadership:

• Define and drive the vision, architecture, and roadmap for end-to-end ACR systems, including SDKs, ingestion, recognition, and data platforms.
• Own the evolution of ACR into a unified, scalable, and data-centric platform powering downstream analytics and products.
• Stay ahead of advancements in ACR, signal processing, distributed systems, and data infrastructure.
• Partner with executive leadership to align engineering strategy with business growth and monetisation goals.

End-to-End Ownership of Platforms:

• Lead development of device-side SDKs for audio/video capture and fingerprinting.
• Oversee backend systems for large-scale content identification, matching, and metadata enrichment.
• Ensure seamless integration between a hybrid of on-prem, cloud services, and downstream data systems.
• Drive architectural consistency across real-time and batch processing layers.
• Build robust ETL/ELT systems and streaming pipelines (e. g., Kafka, Spark, Flink) for high-volume media signals.
• Establish strong data governance, quality, lineage, and observability practices.
• Partner with data science and analytics teams to operationalise models and datasets at scale.

Team Management and Development:

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of software engineers.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning within the team.
• Implement processes for team growth, including training programs, career development paths, and performance evaluations.

Product Development and Delivery:

• Oversee design and delivery of highly scalable, low-latency ACR and data systems deployed globally.
• Partner with Product, Data, and Business teams to deliver high-impact features and capabilities.
• Drive execution excellence with clear prioritisation, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
• Collaborate with external Content Feeds and Ad Clips partners to strengthen ACR integrations and ecosystem reach.

Technical Innovation:

• Lead R& D in audio/video fingerprinting, signal processing, and large-scale matching systems.
• Drive new solutions to optimise ACR technology to handle multiple times throughput at a fraction of the cost
• Innovate in areas such as real-time processing, noise robustness, and content coverage.
• Contribute to patents and intellectual property where applicable.

System Scalability and Reliability:

• Architect and operate systems capable of processing billions of events and petabytes of data.
• Optimise infrastructure for cost, performance, and latency across global deployments.
• Build resilient systems with strong monitoring, alerting, and recovery mechanisms.
• Lead modernisation toward cloud-native, microservices-based, and streaming-first architectures.

Compliance and Security:

• Ensure ACR systems and data pipelines comply with global privacy and data regulations.
• Implement secure data collection, processing, and storage practices.
• Partner with legal and compliance teams on evolving requirements.

Requirements:

• Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Advanced degrees are a plus.
• 12+ years of experience in building high-performance computing products in cloud and on-prem environments.
• 5+ years in engineering leadership roles managing large, cross-functional teams.
• Proven experience in audio or video signal processing, ACR technologies, or related fields.
• Experience building high-throughput, low-latency data pipelines and streaming architectures.

Soft Skills:

• Exceptional leadership and team management abilities.
• Strong communication skills to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Problem-solving mindset with a focus on delivering measurable results.
• Be able to serve as co-site leader for the India office.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience in AdTech, CTV, or measurement ecosystems.
• Experience with identity graphs, attribution systems, or audience platforms.
• Prior experience integrating ACR data into advertising or analytics products is an equal-opportunity employer.