About Affinity Affinity is pioneering new frontiers in AdTech by building privacy-first advertising infrastructure that helps publishers maximize monetization and enables advertisers to reach the right audiences beyond walled gardens. Operating across 10+markets in Asia, the US, and Europe, with a team of 575+ professionals, Affinity continues to innovate at scale in the global AdTech ecosystem. Role: Director – Technology (Data & Platforms) Location: Mumbai (Malad) Role Overview: We are looking for a Director - Technology to lead the architecture, development, and scaling of our backend platforms, comprehensive data ecosystem, and AI integration. This role will oversee a polyglot database environment (SQL, NoSQL, and Big Data) and drive the adoption of AI/ML technologies to enhance our AdTech infrastructure. Key Responsibilities: Data & Database Leadership • Polyglot Persistence: Lead the strategy for a diverse database landscape, ensuring the right tool for the job across MySQL (Relational), Hadoop (Big Data), MongoDB (NoSQL), and cloud-native solutions like Snowflake or BigQuery. • Data Lifecycle Management: Own the end-to-end data journey—from high-velocity ingestion via Kafka to long- term storage in data lakes and real-time retrieval for backend services. AI & Innovation • AI Roadmap: Define and execute the strategy for integrating Modern AI/ML (e.g., LLMs, Predictive Modelling) into backend services to optimize ad targeting and platform efficiency. • Vector Databases: Evaluate and implement vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Milvus, or Weaviate) to support AI- driven search and recommendation engines. Leadership & Team Management • Lead, mentor, and scale backend and data engineering teams. • Drive engineering best practices, coding standards, and architectural reviews. • Partner with Product, Data, and Business teams to translate requirements into scalable technical solutions. • Play a key role in hiring senior engineers and technical leaders. Platform & Cloud Operations • Drive cloud-first architecture and cost-efficient infrastructure design. • Ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery across backend services. • Oversee CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and observability for backend systems. Strategic Contribution • Contribute to long-term technology roadmap and platform evolution. • Evaluate and introduce new backend and data technologies aligned with business growth. • Act as a senior technical voice in leadership discussions and decision-making. Required Skills: • 12–15+ years of software engineering experience • 5+ years in Engineering Manager / Senior Manager / Director roles • Deep experience with MySQL / PostgreSQL / MongoDB or other NoSQL technologies • Hands-on experience managing and scaling Hadoop clusters and distributed processing frameworks (Spark/Flink). • Proficiency in AWS (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Redshift), GCP (Cloud SQL, Spanner, Bigtable, BigQuery) • Hands-on experience with Kafka (producers, consumers, streams, scaling). • Proficiency in Python and shell scripting for automation, backend logic, and data manipulation. • Experience in implementing Modern AI technologies, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative AI frameworks, or predictive analytics. • Ability to use data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker, Metabase, Apache Superset etc )