Senior Software Engineer - OpenPath

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.

About OpenPath

OpenPath provides a direct, transparent connection between The Trade Desk and leading premium publishers—enabling efficient, objective, and high-quality access to inventory for advertisers. By simplifying the programmatic supply chain and reducing intermediaries, OpenPath brings supply path transparency, cost efficiency, and improved visibility into each impression’s value and source.

Purpose:

OpenPath focuses on creating and managing direct integrations with publishers while providing a robust publisher platform. Unlike an SSP, The Trade Desk remains buy-side focused—we do not optimize publisher yield or manage direct deals. Our mission is to deliver transparency and competition that lead to better outcomes for advertisers.

Key Features:

• Direct access to inventory from top publishers through The Trade Desk platform

• Infrastructure designed to integrate with transparent demand solutions, including Prebid’s open-source header bidding

• Emphasis on supply path transparency, cost efficiency, and visibility into cost/value

• A buy-side-only approach supporting competition, innovation, and objective decision-making

Benefits for Advertisers:

• Fewer supply chain hops and greater efficiency

• Objective evaluation of supply paths with no preferential treatment

• Increased transparency into cost drivers, supply sources, and impression value

The Role:

As a Senior Engineer on the OpenPath team, you will serve as a key technical leader responsible for architecting and building the systems that power direct publisher integrations and the publisher platform. You will work on highly impactful greenfield projects that shape the industry’s future—improving transparency, efficiency, and control across billions of impressions and dollars in programmatic spend.

What You Will Do:

Technical Leadership & Architecture:

• Architect and design scalable, high-performance systems that enable direct publisher integrations and transparent supply paths

• Lead platform infrastructure efforts, including components that support Prebid header bidding and publisher tooling

• Drive key architectural decisions for greenfield codebases and next-generation services

Execution & Collaboration:

• Partner closely with product managers, data scientists, client services, data partnerships, inventory teams, and FP&A to translate business needs into technical solutions

• Develop and maintain the publisher platform that empowers publishers to manage their integrations

• Drive system performance improvements to support large datasets (e.g., 100% avails, user data) with high availability and low latency

Leadership & Influence:

• Mentor engineers across the team and elevate engineering practices

• Champion an iterative, fail-fast culture—rapidly prototyping, learning, and evolving solutions

• Set and uphold technical standards for distributed systems, reliability, and platform development

Who You Are:

• A Senior-level Engineer with proven experience building and scaling large distributed systems

• Strong architectural instincts and the ability to design systems for reliability, performance, and scale

• A technical leader with experience mentoring engineers and leading cross-team initiatives

• Deeply curious about the business and passionate about using technology to transform outcomes

• Comfortable operating in ambiguity, iterating quickly, and pivoting when needed

• Collaborative and energized by working across multiple teams and disciplines

• Motivated by transparency, simplicity, and building principled systems

• Experience with high-scale, real-time systems or platform development is a strong plus

Technologies We Use:

• Backend: C#, Scala, Go

• Frontend: React, Redux, TypeScript, Puppeteer, Jest

• Data: SQL, Spark

• Databases: SQL Server, Vertica, Aerospike

• Infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes

Who Won’t Enjoy Working on OpenPath:

• Engineers who want purely technical challenges without business context

• Anyone uncomfortable with failing fast, discarding ideas, or pivoting quickly

• People who prefer rigid structures and slow-moving development cycles

• Individuals that take work too seriously and don’t enjoy a fun, collaborative environment

Why OpenPath Is a Team to Be a Part of:

• Massive business impact: Influence billions in ad spend and reshape how premium inventory is accessed

• Extreme scale: Work with high-volume publisher integrations, 100% avails, user data, and real-time systems

• Broad technical exposure: Touch multiple services across the company—from publisher integrations to demand-side infrastructure

• Deep cross-functional engagement: Collaborate closely with engineering, product, data science, operations, and commercial teams

• Greenfield development: Build several new services and platforms from the ground up

• Innovation culture: Help define the future of transparent, efficient supply paths in programmatic advertising

• Modern technology stack: Build cutting-edge services and lead the evolution toward agile architectures

Position Impact

OpenPath is a major strategic initiative that introduces a transparent, efficient alternative supply path for advertisers. As a Staff Engineer, you will shape the foundational infrastructure that connects advertisers directly to premium publishers—driving industry-wide transparency and improving outcomes at global scale.

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.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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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

At the Trade Desk, Base Salary is one part of our competitive total compensation and benefits package and is determined using a salary range. The base salary range for this role is
$185,000—$250,000 USD

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

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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.