Tech Lead, Ad Exchange

About the role

The Ad Exchange engineering team is responsible for the technical development and operations of our Ad Exchange technology. The Ad Exchange software handles a high volume of requests (40 million requests per minute) and is a highly distributed Java web service. Our team currently uses technologies such as Java, Spring, MySQL, Kafka, Aerospike, ScyllaDb, Memcached, and more.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of high-volume, high-traffic ad exchange web services leveraging Java, Spring, MySQL, ScyllaDB, and Aerospike.
• Take full ownership of the system lifecycle, defining the long-term architectural roadmap and continuously experimenting with new frameworks to optimize performance.
• Establish technical guidelines, set development best practices, and conduct comprehensive design and code reviews to maintain high-quality standards.
• Translate complex stakeholder and customer requests into clear technical requirements, mapping engineering efforts directly to business impact.
• Own the agile process (scrums, sprint planning, retros), accurately estimate levels of effort, and break down large initiatives into actionable Jira tasks.
• Foster a high-performing culture by conducting thoughtful 1:1s, providing actionable feedback, and delegating impactful tasks to scale team capabilities.
• Partner with management to optimize the interview process, design technical evaluation questions, and spearhead robust onboarding plans for new hires.
• As the primary technical point of contact, seamlessly collaborate with cross-functional teams to align timelines and proactively clear engineering bottlenecks.

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep technical proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework.
• Note: A Computer Science degree is a definite plus, but relevant production experience is what we value most.
• Proven track record of shipping production-grade systems utilizing AWS and distributed technologies like Kafka, Aerospike, ScyllaDB, or equivalent heavy-data solutions.
• Experience architecting or working within ultra-high-volume transactional systems handling greater than 100k transactions/second.
• Strong foundation in RDBMS, with strong hands-on experience designing and optimizing MySQL or similar relational databases.
• Strong analytical thinker with a proven ability to debug, optimize, and solve complex logic within highly multi-threaded applications.
• Demonstrated experience coaching, mentoring, and leveling up engineering peers to foster a high-performing team culture.
• Exceptional communication skills with a history of seamlessly partnering with Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders across remote teams and time zones.
• A sharp ability to take vague, complex stakeholder requests and systematically break them down into highly organized, actionable technical tasks.

Qualifications

• Note: A Computer Science degree is a definite plus, but relevant production experience is what we value most.
• Proven track record of shipping production-grade systems utilizing AWS and distributed technologies like Kafka, Aerospike, ScyllaDB, or equivalent heavy-data solutions.
• Experience architecting or working within ultra-high-volume transactional systems handling greater than 100k transactions/second.
• Strong foundation in RDBMS, with strong hands-on experience designing and optimizing MySQL or similar relational databases.
• Strong analytical thinker with a proven ability to debug, optimize, and solve complex logic within highly multi-threaded applications.
• Demonstrated experience coaching, mentoring, and leveling up engineering peers to foster a high-performing team culture.
• Exceptional communication skills with a history of seamlessly partnering with Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders across remote teams and time zones.
• A sharp ability to take vague, complex stakeholder requests and systematically break them down into highly organized, actionable technical tasks.

Skills

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep technical proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework.
• Note: A Computer Science degree is a definite plus, but relevant production experience is what we value most.
• Proven track record of shipping production-grade systems utilizing AWS and distributed technologies like Kafka, Aerospike, ScyllaDB, or equivalent heavy-data solutions.
• Experience architecting or working within ultra-high-volume transactional systems handling greater than 100k transactions/second.
• Strong foundation in RDBMS, with strong hands-on experience designing and optimizing MySQL or similar relational databases.
• Strong analytical thinker with a proven ability to debug, optimize, and solve complex logic within highly multi-threaded applications.
• Demonstrated experience coaching, mentoring, and leveling up engineering peers to foster a high-performing team culture.
• Exceptional communication skills with a history of seamlessly partnering with Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders across remote teams and time zones.
• A sharp ability to take vague, complex stakeholder requests and systematically break them down into highly organized, actionable technical tasks.

Benefits

• Competitive base pay is a part of a total rewards package which also includes benefits, an emphasis on recognition, development, and wellness.
• The reasonable estimated base pay range for this role is from $186,000 - $215,000 annually.
• Your recruiter can share more specifics during the hiring process.

Pay

• The reasonable estimated base pay range for this role is from $186,000 - $215,000 annually.

Schedule

• GumGum offers a flexible work environment, allowing employees to work either in-office or remotely/from home.
• However, for occasional in-person collaboration, we kindly ask that this position be located within a 'commutable' distance to our office.