Senior Software Engineer

TripleLift; Zürich; On-site; CHF 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

TripleLift is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the Core RTB Engineering team. You will design, build, and operate core RTB services that decide ads to run at sub-100 ms latency, across NYC and Zurich hubs.

This role focuses on high-throughput Java code and distributed systems at internet scale. You will partner with product managers, data scientists, and platform teams to push AI-enabled optimizations, ensure reliability, and maintain observability.

Qualifications

• 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.

Responsibilities

• Own a mission-critical Java codebase that powers TripleLift’s Exchange — executing billions of times a day under sub-100-millisecond latency budgets and across multiple AWS regions and data centers.
• 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 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.

Skills

Java backend

Distributed systems

APIs & microservices

AWS

Performance tuning

Observability

AI tools usage

Code reviews

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Memcached/Redis

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Netty

OpenRTB

Job description

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.

Overview

The Senior Software Engineer – Core RTB Engineering 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 our value proposition. In this role, you will partner closely with engineers, product managers, data scientists, and platform teams across our New York City and Zurich hubs 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 internet-scale, low-latency distributed systems and help shape the next generation of programmatic advertising in an AI-accelerated engineering environment.

Responsibilities

• Own a mission-critical Java codebase that powers TripleLift’s Exchange — executing billions of times a day under sub-100-millisecond latency budgets and across multiple AWS regions and data centers.
• 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.

Preferred Qualifications (Nice-to-Have)

• Experience with Netty or other event-driven, non-blocking JVM frameworks for low-latency network services.
• Data skills such as Apache Spark, Snowflake, Red Panda
• Hands-on experience with Aerospike, Couchbase or 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.
• Experience integrating ML models into latency-sensitive serving paths — e.g., real-time inference, online feature retrieval, or model A/B evaluation — ideally in a bidding, ranking, or pricing context.
• Exposure to LLM- or agent-based systems, including production experience with tool-using agents, retrieval pipelines, or evaluation frameworks for non-deterministic components.
• Experience with computer vision, image processing, or creative-asset transformation pipelines at scale.
• 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.

Soft Skills & Attributes

• Ownership mindset and drive for achievement
• 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

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.

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