Lead Staff Software Engineer

The Trade Desk is a global technology company with a mission to create a better, more open internet for everyone through principled, intelligent advertising. Handling over 1 trillion queries per day, our platform operates at an unprecedented scale. We have also built something even stronger and more valuable: an award-winning culture based on trust, ownership, empathy, and collaboration. We value the unique experiences and perspectives that each person brings to The Trade Desk, and we are committed to fostering inclusive spaces where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work every day.

Do you have a passion for solving hard problems at scale? Are you eager to join a dynamic, globally-connected team where your contributions will make a meaningful difference in building a better media ecosystem? Come and see why Fortune magazine consistently ranks The Trade Desk among the best small- to medium-sized workplaces globally.

Our Software Engineers are end-to-end owners who have the opportunity to participate in many aspects of designing, building, and delivering data-focused products for our stakeholders. At The Trade Desk, we believe in building the backend infrastructure of our platform with a focus on quality at scale. Whether we are building parts of our client-facing applications, internal custom solutions for our own team members, or model pipelines for bidding optimizations, we are making sure that we have infrastructure, development, and tools to do it right and efficiently.

Our system performs every day, 24/7, serving global traffic. We build a distributed system in a highly collaborative environment, utilizing a broad range of technologies. Our backend developers work on finding solutions to algorithmic, optimization, and scale challenges in everything we do.

At the Privacy Engineering and Data Governance team, as part of the Data Platform org., we focus on the sensitive part of data - we make sure our systems know what data is sensitive, handle it appropriately, deliver it to the right hands only, and track its life and usage. All of that on a scale of 15 million QPS without slowing down.

By nature, we are a “horizontal team” – we touch every product TTD offers and, through that, a variety of tech stacks. Our stakeholders are mostly internal, and we team up with multiple R&D and UX teams. The team is based in 2 locations – London, UK and CO, US (Denver and Boulder).

What you’ll do:

• Technical leadership: Actively review design and code. Deliver meaningful technical and hands-on contributions to the team's objectives. Understand strategic business priorities and how the team’s charter impacts those, and communicate with the team on how their work fits into the roadmap.
• Project level processes and execution: Collaborate with the PM (product management) team to develop the roadmap and MVP plans. Develop execution plans (resources, milestones, and timelines) for the roadmaps. Continuously analyze and optimize team efficiency. Establish and deliver on team commitments. Measure and maintain/improve the quality of the team's contributions. Communicate important developments and changes to area leadership and other stakeholders.
• People management: Manage a small team. Help team members develop career growth plans. Give regular and effective feedback. Hold weekly 1:1 meetings with direct reports. Annual reviews and compensation recommendations.

Who you are:

Our culture is much deeper than just having fun together (though we do that well, too). We take pride in our engineers being trust-builders, generous givers, scrappy problem solvers, and gritty pursuers of excellence. You do not have to meet all the requirements below, but we believe that people who meet most of them will have a higher likelihood of succeeding in this role:

• You are comfortable working on an agile, distributed team spanning multiple time zones and continents.
• You can communicate effectively across both technical and non-technical audiences.
• You have a solid understanding of computer science and engineering fundamentals.
• You have experience working with distributed systems.
• You are passionate about the “why” behind what you’re doing, not just about the challenge it represents.
• You have a track record of leading and completing projects with a high level of technical ambiguity.
• You have 10+ years of software development engineering experience and 1+ years of experience directly managing people.
• You have a Bachelor’s/Master’s level degree in computer science or relevant engineering-related field or equivalent experience.
• You are proficient in one or more of the following programming languages: C#, Python, SQL, or Scala (and willing to learn those you do not know).
• You have a solid understanding of cloud computing.
• You have additional nice-to-have experience in the following areas: database engines (Microsoft SQL Server, Aerospike, Vertica, Redis), building micro-services, operating systems and cloud, Kubernetes, Kafka, EMR, Spark.

A variety of technical opportunities is one of the best things about working at The Trade Desk as a software engineer, which is why we do not expect you to know every technology we use when you start. What we care about is that you can learn quickly and find solutions to complex problems using the optimum tools for the job. What you know is less important than how well you learn and innovate. We are not seeking engineers who know all the answers; we need engineers who can invent answers no one has thought of yet and find answers to the questions yet to be asked.

The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to making our job application process accessible to everyone and to providing reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If you have a disability or medical condition and require an accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process, please contact us at accommodations@thetradedesk.com.