Director, Technology (SitePlug)

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

Location: Mumbai (Malad)

Role Overview

Director of Technology to lead the architecture, development, and scaling of our AdTech and affiliate advertising platforms. This role will own core technology decisions across web, backend, data, and AI-driven systems, enabling high-performance, low-latency applications that power ecommerce advertising, product feeds, and search-driven monetization.

You will work closely with Product, Data, and Business leaders to translate platform and revenue goals into scalable, reliable, and future-ready technology solutions.

Key Responsibilities

1) Technology & Architecture

• Own end-to-end technical architecture for AI-driven search, discovery, and ecommerce platforms.
• Design and scale low-latency, high-throughput backend systems supporting real-time search and ads.
• Lead development of AI-powered search, ranking, relevance, and recommendation systems.
• Architect robust product feed ingestion, normalization, enrichment, and distribution pipelines.
• Drive system design best practices around scalability, resilience, security, and performance.
  

2) Leadership & Team Management

• Build, lead, and mentor high-performing engineering teams across backend, platform, and AI domains.
• Set clear technical direction, coding standards, and engineering best practices.
• Partner closely with Product, Data, and Business leaders to translate business goals into scalable tech solutions.
• Conduct technical reviews, hiring, performance management, and succession planning.

3) Platform & Cloud Operations

• Own cloud-native platform development and operations on GCP.
• Ensure high availability, reliability, and cost optimization across production systems.
• Establish CI/CD pipelines, observability, monitoring, and incident response processes.
• Drive automation, security, and compliance best practices across infrastructure and applications.

4) Strategic Contribution

• Define long-term technology roadmap aligned with SitePlugs product and business strategy.
• Evaluate and adopt new technologies in AI, search, and commerce to maintain competitive advantage.
• Enable monetization through integrations with PLA ads, search engines, and performance marketing platforms.
• Represent technology leadership in cross-functional and executive-level discussions.

5) AI & Intelligent Systems (added advantage)

• Define experimentation frameworks for AI/search (A/B testing, interleaving, holdouts) and offline evaluation (NDCG, MRR, CTR/CVR uplift, revenue impact).

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  Partner with Product/Business to identify 2–3 high-impact GenAI use cases

Required Skills:

• 12+ years in backend/platform engineering with at least 3+ years in a senior technical leadership role.
• Strong hands-on experience with PHP (and modern backend frameworks) for scalable systems.
• Proven expertise in GCP Cloud (compute, storage, data services, networking, security).
• Deep experience building low-latency, high-availability systems.
• Hands-on delivery of AI-powered search or search product technology (e.g., local search, discovery platforms, marketplaces).
• Strong understanding of ecommerce platforms, product feeds, catalogs, pricing, and availability.
• Experience working with PLA ads, search engines, and performance marketing tech.
• Ability to evaluate AI vendors/managed services, integrate APIs into production safely, and measure business impact.