Staff/Senior Software Engineer, Programmatic Bidding

StackAdapt; Canada; On-site; CAD 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology company in Canada is looking for a Programmatic Bidding Engineer to lead the design and optimization of their bidding systems. This role requires a strong background in AdTech, advanced programming skills, and experience with machine learning. The ideal candidate will foster a culture of operational excellence, collaborate with cross-functional teams to ship innovative features, and continuously improve system performance. A competitive salary and a diverse, inclusive workplace are offered.

Benefits

Highly competitive salary

401K/Pension Savings

Paid time off packages

mental health care program

Health benefits from day one

Work from home reimbursements

Global WeWork membership

Robust training and onboarding

Personal development initiatives

Parental leave program

Friendly and supportive culture

Qualifications

• Experience applying advanced programming languages.
• Hands-on experience with database systems.
• Solid grasp of computer science fundamentals.

Responsibilities

• Lead and optimize programmatic bidding systems.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to build innovative solutions.
• Continuously optimize performance through quantitative analysis.
• Partner with Product teams to drive business results.

Skills

Analytical thinking

Performance optimization

Machine learning

Programming expertise

Education

3+ years in AdTech or MarTech

5+ years in software development

Tools

Go

C++

Java

Scala

Rust

Job description

StackAdapt is the leading technology company that empowers marketers to reach, engage, and convert audiences with precision. With 465 billion automated optimizations per second, the AI‑powered StackAdapt Marketing Platform seamlessly connects brand and performance marketing to drive measurable results across the entire customer journey. The most forward‑thinking marketers choose StackAdapt to orchestrate high‑impact campaigns across programmatic advertising and marketing channels.

About the Team:

The Programmatic Bidding team powers our Adtech platform by processing billions of ad auctions every day at millisecond latency. Our Bidding team designs, and builds scalable microservices that span every core aspect of the Adtech pipeline—including pacing, machine learning, bid price optimization, user‑profile enrichment, and more. The StackAdapt bidding platform supports hundreds of thousands of advertisers, delivering real‑time, intelligent and performant bidding decisions ensuring that every bid is both efficient, and strategically aligned with our customer's business goals. We empower our customers with the best performance driven platform for them to drive the best business decisions, and ROI.

The ideal candidates we're looking for must have proven experience in Adtech, exceptional analytical thinking, and superior execution skills. You'll thrive here if you are eager to build and experiment with new technologies and approaches, and can back your ideas with rigorous analysis and data‑driven, pragmatic approaches.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead and collaborate with a team of engineers to design, implement, and optimize our programmatic bidding systems.
• Apply analytical, data‑driven, and statistical methodologies to problem solving. Continuously optimizing programmatic performance through experimentation and quantitative analysis.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to architect and to build complex, innovative solutions that pushes the boundaries of programmatic advertising capabilities, and drive impactful business results.
• Rigorously optimize large‑scale distributed systems capable of handling billions of requests per second with ms‑level latency, ensuring high throughput and infrastructure performance under demanding workloads.
• Partner with Product teams to ship innovative features that advance the company's vision, and drive competitive advantage.
• Embody the team mission. Be adaptable, and ground development efforts in pragmatic, results‑oriented decision making.
• Foster operational excellence across engineering and backend teams by cultivating a culture of trust, transparency and technical excellence.
• Clearly articulate development ideas and hypotheses, openly embrace technical feedback to support collaborative innovation and continuous improvement.

What You’ll Bring to the Table:

• 3+ years of experience in AdTech or MarTech, ideally working on high‑scale or performance‑critical systems.
• Advanced programming expertise in Go (or strong proficiency in comparable languages such as C++, Java, Scala, or Rust). We value engineers who can deliver high‑performance applications regardless of language.
• Experience applying machine learning, mathematics, and numerical methods—including deploying large‑scale models and real‑time inference systems in production. (This is an applied engineering role, not research‑focused.)
• 5+ years of experience in software development, particularly building high‑throughput, low‑latency distributed systems and architecting scalable microservices or data pipelines in a fast‑growing tech environment.
• Hands‑on experience with multiple database systems, with a solid grasp of their trade‑offs and performance considerations.
• Strong foundation in computer science fundamentals, including data structures and algorithms.
• Up‑to‑date knowledge of modern technologies, tools, and frameworks, with curiosity to continuously learn and evolve.
• Bonus: Interest or experience in computational graphics, GPU programming, game development, game theory, or financial trading systems.

StackAdapter's Enjoy:

• Highly competitive salary
• Retirement/ 401K/ Pension Savings globally
• Competitive Paid time off packages including birthday's off!
• Access to a comprehensive mental health care program
• Health benefits from day one of employment
• Work from home reimbursements
• Optional global WeWork membership for those who want a change from their home office and hubs in London and Toronto
• Robust training and onboarding program
• Coverage and support of personal development initiatives (conferences, courses, books etc)
• Access to StackAdapt programmatic courses and certifications to support continuous learning
• An awesome parental leave program
• A friendly, welcoming, and supportive culture
• Our social and team events!

StackAdapt is a diverse and inclusive team of collaborative, hardworking individuals trying to make a dent in the universe. No matter who you are, where you are from, who you love, follow in faith, disability (or superpower) status, ethnicity, or the gender you identify with (if you’re comfortable, let us know your pronouns), you are welcome at StackAdapt. If you have any requests or requirements to support you throughout any part of the interview process, please let our Talent team know.

We use artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline the resume reviews of candidates and assess their fit based on the criteria outlined in the job posting. We do not use AI to make any final hiring or interview decisions.

About StackAdapt

We've been recognized for our diverse and supportive workplace, high performing campaigns, award‑winning customer service, and innovation. We've been awarded:

Ad Age Best Places to Work 2024

G2 Top Software and Top Marketing and Advertising Product for 2024

Campaign’s Best Places to Work 2023 for the UK

2024 Best Workplaces for Womenandin Canadaby Great Place to Work®

#1 DSP on G2 and leader in a number of categories including Cross-Channel Advertising