About TripleLift
We're TripleLift, an advertising platform on a mission to elevate digital advertising through beautiful creative, quality publishers, actionable data and smart targeting. Through over 1 trillion monthly ad transactions, we help publishers and platforms monetize their businesses. Our technology is where the world's leading brands find audiences across online video, connected television, display and native ads. Brand and enterprise customers choose us because of our innovative solutions, premium formats, and supportive experts dedicated to maximizing their performance.
As part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio, we are NMSDC certified, qualify for diverse spending goals and are committed to economic inclusion. Find out how TripleLift raises up the programmatic ecosystem at triplelift.com.
The Senior Staff Engineer plays a critical role in driving the performance, scalability, and intelligence of TripleLift’s Exchange — the real-time bidding platform that processes over a trillion ad transactions per month and sits at the heart of TripleLift. In this role, you will partner closely with engineers, product managers, data scientists, and platform teams across our entire ecosystem to design, build, and operate the core RTB services that decide which ads run, where, and at what price.
This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced backend engineer who wants to work on high-scale, low-latency distributed systems to help shape the next generation of programmatic advertising in an AI-accelerated environment.
Responsibilities- Design, build, and evolve high-throughput services for bidding logic, auction mechanics, traffic shaping, and creative/image processing, with a focus on reliability, observability, and cost efficiency.
- Write maintainable, well-tested code; instrument production systems with meaningful metrics, traces, and alerts; and take end-to-end ownership of the health of the services you ship.
- Use modern AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) as a routine part of your workflow — leveraging them to accelerate development, raise code quality, and explore design alternatives, while applying strong engineering judgment to validate and own every line that reaches production.
- Research and evaluate emerging technologies, including AI/ML-driven optimizations and agentic capabilities relevant to bidding and traffic decisions, and translate promising ideas into production-quality systems.
- Partner with engineers across our NYC and Zurich teams to maintain shared standards in architecture, code review, observability, and incident response, operating as one consistent global Core RTB engineering function.
- Mentor and coach other engineers on Java, distributed systems best practices, and the effective and responsible use of AI tooling, raising the bar across the team.
Education & Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on backend services running in production at scale.
- Demonstrated experience building high-performance APIs and services in Java.
- Track record of working on large-scale, network-heavy systems handling billions of HTTP requests per day under strict latency requirements.
- Familiarity with in-memory key-value stores (e.g., Memcache, Redis) and messaging systems (e.g., Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ).
- Solid grasp of distributed systems design patterns and their trade-offs, including concurrency, caching, backpressure, fault tolerance, and observability.
- Production experience operating services across multiple AWS regions or comparable cloud environments.
- Working fluency with modern AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) and a thoughtful point of view on where AI tooling accelerates work and where human judgment must lead.
- Strong written communication and comfort collaboration skills.
- Experience with event-driven, non-blocking JVM frameworks for low-latency network services.
- Data skills such as Apache Spark, Snowflake, Red Panda
- Hands-on experience with NoSQL and other specialized low-latency key-value stores operated at high QPS.
- Background in ad tech, RTB, or programmatic advertising, including familiarity with OpenRTB, VAST, or related industry protocols.
- Demonstrated JVM performance tuning experience: GC analysis, async/non-blocking I/O, lock contention, allocation profiling, and CPU/memory optimization in hot paths.
- Track record of leading cross-team or cross-region technical initiatives, including writing design docs and driving architectural decisions to consensus.
- Ownership mindset and drive for achievement
- Creative problem solver
- Passion for continuous learning and automation
- Excellent organization, attention to detail, and time management
- Independent work ethic and adaptability to fast-paced environments
- Strong problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaborative skills
- Openness to feedback and a growth mindset
- Medical, Dental & Vision Plans
- Flexible PTO
- 401k w/ employer match
*Full-time employees are eligible for comprehensive benefits (subject to the terms of applicable plans/policies/agreements, which will be made available to you after commencing employment).
Life at TripleLift
At TripleLift, we’re a team of great people who like who they work with and want to make everyone around them better. This means being positive, collaborative, and compassionate. We hustle harder than the competition and are continuously innovating.
Learn more about TripleLift and our culture by visiting our LinkedIn Life page.
Establishing People, Culture and Community Initiatives
At TripleLift, we are committed to building a culture where people feel connected, supported, and empowered to do their best work. We invest in our people and foster a workplace that encourages curiosity, celebrates shared values, and promotes meaningful connections across teams and communities. We want to ensure the best talent of every background, viewpoint, and experience has an opportunity to be hired, belong, and develop at TripleLift. Through our People, Culture, and Community initiatives, we aim to create an environment where everyone can thrive and feel a true sense of belonging.
Privacy Policy
Please see our Privacy Policies on our TripleLift and 1plusX websites.
TripleLift does not accept unsolicited resumes from any type of recruitment search firm. Any resume submitted in the absence of a signed agreement will become the property of TripleLift and no fee shall be due.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience focused on production backend services at scale
- Experience building high-performance APIs and services in Java
- Experience building large-scale, network-heavy systems handling billions of HTTP requests daily under strict latency requirements
- Familiarity with Memcache, Redis, Apache Kafka, or RabbitMQ
- Knowledge of distributed-systems design patterns, concurrency, caching, backpressure, fault tolerance, and observability
- Production experience operating services across multiple AWS regions or comparable cloud environments
- Working fluency with AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or Cursor
- Strong written communication and collaboration skills
- Experience with event-driven, non-blocking JVM frameworks for low-latency network services
- Data skills including Apache Spark, Snowflake, or Redpanda
- Hands-on experience with NoSQL and specialized low-latency key-value stores at high QPS
- Background in ad tech, RTB, or programmatic advertising, including OpenRTB or VAST
- JVM performance tuning experience, including GC analysis, asynchronous I/O, lock contention, allocation profiling, and CPU or memory optimization
- Experience leading cross-team or cross-region technical initiatives, writing design documents, and driving architectural consensus
- Ownership mindset, achievement orientation, creative problem-solving, continuous learning, and automation focus
- Excellent organization, attention to detail, and time-management skills
- Independent work ethic and adaptability in fast-paced environments
- Strong problem-solving, critical-thinking, and collaborative skills
- Openness to feedback and a growth mindset
TripleLift Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about TripleLift and has not been reviewed or approved by TripleLift.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity participation and stock option grants are described as meaningful parts of total compensation and are frequently appreciated. Equity is noted alongside bonuses as a valuable upside that contributes to overall satisfaction.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Unlimited PTO, paid holidays and sick days, monthly mental health days, and a one‑month sabbatical after five years illustrate a generous time‑off offering. These policies are portrayed as supporting work‑life balance and wellbeing.
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Healthcare Strength — Medical, dental, and vision coverage, life insurance, FSAs, and company‑paid disability insurance are positioned as competitive. Access to wellbeing resources such as Headspace and other programs further bolsters the benefits package.
TripleLift Insights
What We Do
TripleLift is redefining digital advertising by delivering innovative, high-quality ad experiences that create real connections. By combining cutting-edge creative technology, actionable data, advanced targeting, and premium inventory, we empower publishers and brands to discover new opportunities, achieve measurable outcomes, and engage audiences seamlessly across every platform.
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