Identity resolution engineer for Netflix's Ads Identity Graph

Netflix's Ads Identity Graph team needs an engineer to build identity resolution services that match advertiser/partner data while preserving member privacy and consent. Expect deep questions on deterministic vs. probabilistic matching, large-scale Spark pipelines, and privacy-by-design tradeoffs — this is a senior/staff-caliber ($388K-$558K) individual contributor role despite the 'Software Engineer 5' title.

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What this interview tests

Deterministic and probabilistic identity resolution
Privacy-by-design and consent management in system architecture
Batch (Spark) and near-real-time distributed systems
DSP/programmatic and data clean room integrations
Precision/recall/latency tradeoffs at scale

Common question themes

Design an identity resolution system balancing deterministic and probabilistic matching

How would you integrate identifier collection into a downstream pipeline while respecting consent

Describe a time you had to embed privacy/data governance requirements into system design

Explain a large-scale Spark pipeline you built and its throughput/latency constraints

How would you safely integrate identity signals with a DSP or data clean room

Your familiarity with GDPR/CCPA/CPRA and how it shaped a design decision

How candidates describe it

Real Software Engineer 5 - Ads Identity Graph interview stories — retold from candidates' public write-ups, with sources.

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