Staff Software Engineer, Ads

Role overview A staff-level engineering role responsible for defining and driving the technical strategy behind an advertising platform that powers live sports experiences. The position blends hands-on architecture with cross-team technical leadership, shaping systems that need to be reliable, scalable, and ready to absorb new ad formats and business opportunities. It reports into engineering leadership and partners closely with Product, Design, Data, and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities - Define and drive the technical strategy and architecture for the advertising platform, preparing it for video, server-side, connected TV, and programmatic ad experiences. - Lead architecture and system design for complex initiatives spanning advertising, video, backend services, clients, and data systems. - Evaluate third-party advertising technologies and architectural approaches, weighing scalability, reliability, user experience, and implementation complexity. - Establish patterns and abstractions that make it safer and easier for other teams to build and experiment with ad experiences. - Improve reliability, observability, scalability, and maintainability across ad systems and integrations, including occasional on-call participation. - Mentor engineers through design reviews, architectural guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing, while maintaining technical roadmaps and documentation.

Requirements - 8+ years of professional software development experience with demonstrated technical leadership on complex or large-scale systems. - Background designing and evolving distributed, high-scale production systems. - Professional experience architecting advertising technology systems or integrations, with strong backend engineering foundations and exposure to video advertising. - Experience in one or more areas of the modern ad ecosystem, such as ad serving, video ad delivery, SSAI/CSAI, VAST, programmatic advertising, or header bidding. - Strong understanding of API design, distributed systems, reliability, observability, and system performance. - Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical decisions beyond immediate projects and teams.

Nice to have - Experience with live or streaming video systems, connected TV advertising, or server-side ad insertion. - Familiarity with Google Ad Manager or comparable ad-serving platforms, plus TypeScript, Node.js, AWS, Redis, and PostgreSQL.

Benefits and work setup - Remote-first within the US, with the option to work from a modern Manhattan office. - Unlimited vacation, paid volunteer opportunities, a $4,000 technology stipend every two years, and a $500 annual WFH stipend. - Monthly wellness and learning stipend, monthly lifestyle stipend, full medical, dental, and vision benefits with FSA, HRA, and HSA options, and family or dependent coverage. - Traditional and Roth 401(k) plans with immediate company match, life and disability insurance, and up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents. - Family-building benefits, plus a teammate discount through a sporting goods brand and family of brands. - Target salary range of $165,000 to $185,000, plus incentive and equity as part of the total compensation package.