Director - Technology

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 SitePlug's 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).

- 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 (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.