The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising, with nearly 4,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet — from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more.
Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world’s brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly.
The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges — from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you’re driven to solve meaningful challenges, we’d love to meet you.
What we do
At The Trade Desk, we believe that each opportunity to engage with all internal and external stakeholders is unique. This means you will have the opportunity, based on your interests and background, to work on large-scale distributed systems coordinating thousands of servers in cloud and physical data centers around the world, petabyte-scale data challenges, machine learning, advanced visualizations, and interactive user interfaces – to name a few.
Our system performs all day, every day, serving global traffic. We build distributed systems in a highly collaborative environment, utilizing a broad range of technologies to solve algorithmic, optimization, and scale challenges.
What you’ll do:
As a Senior Engineer on this team, you will lead the design and evolution of our feed definitions, ensuring they remain performant across a complex multi-cloud environment. You will tackle the challenge of unifying diverse ingest and egress paths while maximizing code reusability and minimizing latency—even as data volumes surge.
Beyond the code, you will empower stakeholders by driving self-service provisioning and increasing the flexibility of our platform.
You will also play a key role in our culture, fostering an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives are welcomed to build better technical solutions.
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 have 7+ years of software development and engineering experience.
- You have experience using Vertica, Snowflake or Databricks (or similar data platform technologies)
- You have experience in the following nice-to-have areas: building microservices, Cloud, Kubernetes, and Kafka.
- 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 strong experience working with distributed systems.
- You have expertise in a backend programming language such as C#, Java, or Python.
Variety of technical opportunity 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 don't need engineers who know all the answers; we need engineers who can invent the answers no one has thought of yet, to the questions yet to be asked.
The Trade Desk does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm recruiters. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired; such resumes will be deemed the sole property of The Trade Desk. 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, color, 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.
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In accordance with various US state laws, the range provided is the Trade Desk's reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role. The actual amount may differ based on non-discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, and location. All employees may be eligible to become The Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock-based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance. The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as variable compensation-based incentives and commissions. Plus, expected benefits for this role include comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, and vision) with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents, retirement benefits such as a 401k plan and company match, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, well-being benefits, reimbursement for certain tuition expenses, parental leave, sick time of 1 hour per 30 hours worked, vacation time for full-time employees up to 120 hours thru the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year. Employees can also purchase The Trade Desk stock at a discount through The Trade Desk’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
The Trade Desk also offers a competitive benefits package. Click here to learn more.
Note: Interns are not eligible for variable incentive awards such as stock-based compensation, retirement plan, vacation, tuition reimbursement or parental leave
As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
Please reach out to us at accommodations@thetradedesk.com to request an accommodation or discuss any accessibility needs you may require to access our Company Website or navigate any part of the hiring process.
When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions.
Skills Required
- 7+ years of software development and engineering experience.
- Experience using Vertica, Snowflake or Databricks (or similar data platform technologies).
- Experience building microservices.
- Experience with Cloud technologies.
- Experience with Kubernetes.
- Experience with Kafka.
- Comfortable working on an agile, distributed team spanning multiple time zones.
- Ability to communicate effectively across technical and non-technical audiences.
- Solid understanding of computer science and engineering fundamentals.
- Strong experience working with distributed systems.
- Expertise in a backend programming language such as C#, Java, or Python.
The Trade Desk Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about The Trade Desk and has not been reviewed or approved by The Trade Desk.
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Affordable Benefits — Healthcare premiums are often paid in full for employees and dependents, reducing out-of-pocket costs. Coverage includes medical, dental, and vision alongside mental health and wellness support.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Packages commonly include new-hire stock grants, a generous Employee Stock Purchase Plan, and equity refreshers tied to performance. Feedback suggests equity meaningfully boosts total compensation alongside base pay and bonuses.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Generous PTO, paid holidays, paid sick time, and sabbaticals are available. Paid parental leave and extensive family-planning support broaden time-off and caregiving coverage.
The Trade Desk Insights
What We Do
The Trade Desk is changing the way global brands and their agencies advertise to audiences around the world. Our mission is to transform media for the benefit of humankind. Our media-buying platform helps brands deliver a more insightful and relevant ad experience for consumers — and sets a new standard for reach, accuracy, and transparency.
Why Work With Us
With up to 11 million queries per second and SLAs in the milliseconds, we’re tackling data and software challenges at massive scale. While we’re growing fast, investing in our value based company culture remains one of our top priorities. If you’re talented, driven, and hungry to bring something entirely new and wildly ambitious, let's talk.
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