Lead Sr Staff Software Engineer - Front End Fundamentals

About the role

The Lead Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Desk Fundamentals team plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of The Trade Desk's platform. This position involves deep involvement in the design, development, and delivery of essential features that enhance the user experience for traders.

Responsibilities

• Actively review designs, code, and architecture across the team's surface area, from the platform framework to the data-rich tables and panels used by traders.
• Deliver meaningful, technical, and hands-on contributions to the team's objectives, including architectural decisions on the shared UI framework and concrete pull requests.
• Understand strategic business priorities and communicate these to the team, aligning the team's work with broader roadmap and company goals.
• Drive the technical direction for how other engineering teams within Core Workflows and across the broader organization build on top of the platform framework owned by the Desk Fundamentals team.
• Collaborate with the Product Management team to develop the roadmap and MVP plans, translating complex UX and platform consistency challenges into clear engineering work.
• Develop execution plans including resources, milestones, and timelines for roadmap initiatives, and define and track business KPIs and user-facing metrics.
• Continuously analyze and optimize team efficiency, remove blockers, and ensure the team ships with quality.
• Establish and deliver on team commitments, and communicate important developments and changes to area leadership and other stakeholders.
• Measure and maintain the quality of the team's contributions, including platform reliability, consistency, and developer experience for teams building on top of what we own.
• Manage a small team of talented engineers, serving as both their technical leader and people manager, helping them develop career growth plans and accelerate toward their next level.
• Give regular and effective feedback, conduct annual reviews, and make compensation recommendations.
• Foster an inclusive, psychologically safe team culture where diverse perspectives are genuinely valued.

Requirements

You must have a solid understanding of SDLC, DevOps, and agile methodologies. Experience with cloud computing and large-scale, distributed web applications is required. You should have a strong understanding of design patterns and software architecture, including frontend systems design and component-based architectures. Experience in leading and growing multiple senior engineers and tech leads is essential. You must have experience leading and completing projects with a high degree of technical ambiguity, and experience driving major, strategic, company-wide initiatives with significant risk. You should have experience hiring and conducting interviews, and proficiency in one or more programming languages such as TypeScript/JavaScript, C#, Java, C, C++, Python, SQL, or Scala. You must have 13+ years of software development engineering experience and 1+ years of experience directly managing people. A Bachelor's/Master's level degree in computer science or a relevant engineering-related field, or equivalent experience, is required. Additional nice-to-have experience includes full-stack web development, frontend framework design, data visualization and table-heavy UI systems, distributed systems, microservices, Kubernetes, and AI/LLM integration into production applications.

Qualifications

Our culture values trust-building, generosity, scrappiness, and grit. You should be able to provide technical and project leadership of initiatives involving multiple teams, including platform or framework work where your team's decisions directly affect the velocity and quality of teams outside your own. You must be proficient in one or more of the following programming languages: TypeScript/JavaScript, C#, Java, C, C++, Python, SQL, or Scala. You must have 13+ years of software development engineering experience and 1+ years of experience directly managing people. You must have a Bachelor's/Master's level degree in computer science or a relevant engineering-related field, or equivalent experience. Additional nice-to-have qualifications include full-stack web development, frontend framework design, data visualization and table-heavy UI systems, distributed systems, microservices, Kubernetes, and AI/LLM integration into production applications.

Skills

Technical leadership, project level processes and execution, people management, career growth planning, and effective feedback are key skills for this role. You should be proficient in one or more programming languages and have experience leading and completing projects with a high degree of technical ambiguity, driving major, strategic, company-wide initiatives with significant risk, and hiring and conducting interviews. Additionally, you should have experience in full-stack web development, frontend framework design, data visualization and table-heavy UI systems, distributed systems, microservices, Kubernetes, and AI/LLM integration into production applications.

Benefits

At The Trade Desk, you will receive 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, including a variety of technical opportunities, and a commitment to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.