Engineering Manager Ads Backend

Zattoo; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Streaming access

Development budget

German classes

Hack days

Global team

Health & wellbeing

Bike rentals

Social events

Job summary

Zattoo is seeking an Engineering Manager for the Ads Backend to lead a high-visibility SSAI initiative. You will guide architecture, align with ingest/storage, streaming, and playback teams, and drive end-to-end delivery with hands-on engineering leadership.

You will mentor 2–4 engineers, shape technical direction, and own the revenue-impacting services while maintaining high standards for availability, performance, and scale. Fluency in English is essential.

Qualifications

• 5+ years leading engineering teams.
• Hands-on engineering: design, build, review production code, and lead by example.
• Experience with advertising tech platforms, ad serving, and DAI/SSAI.
• Broad experience across the video pipeline (ingest, transcoding, packaging, DRM, streaming, playback).
• Fluent English, written and verbal.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Ads Backend team, organisationally and technically.
• Own the SSAI platform architecture with senior developers.
• Contribute hands-on as technical lead: review designs and code when needed.
• Own end-to-end development process and operational excellence for revenue-impacting services.
• Shape the technical direction of Zattoo’s video platform with other teams.
• Drive cross-team initiatives across multiple video teams.
• Represent the team to stakeholders.
• Directly manage 2–4 engineers and lead hiring.
• Grow, develop, and retain engineering talent.

Skills

Team leadership

C++/Go

Scalable services

Distributed systems

Testing

English fluency

Ad tech

Video pipeline

Tools

Kafka

Scylla

Job description

YOUR FUTURE, ON DEMAND

The ideal blend of stability and flexibility. A genuinely human employer that cares for people and the planet. True autonomy to shape what comes next, for us and you. This is the perfect platform to take your career where you want.

Back in 2005, we pioneered Europe’s first TV streaming service. Today, we're a leading TV streaming provider with millions of monthly users, and since 2021 we've been ClimatePartner-certified. Over 200 colleagues of 47 nationalities. We’re the grown-up start-up, helping to shape a better future since day one. That hasn’t changed, even if the world has. We’re friendly, international, inclusive – and our people say we’re reliable and transparent, too. It’s why they trust us and believe in what we do.

THE ROLE

Video is the heart of all Zattoo’s services: thousands of 24/7 live TV channels plus on‑demand content from dozens of providers. The Ads Backend team turns that content into a personalised, revenue‑generating advertising experience.

As an Engineering Manager, you enable your team to do their best work: approachable, a good listener, and a strong facilitator of ideas and knowledge. You bring your own ideas for improving the architecture and extending what our systems can do.

This is a hands‑on leadership role. We want a manager who is also a strong engineer, someone who acts as technical lead, dives into the code and architecture when it matters, and sets direction by example.

Ads Backend is your home base, not the limit of your influence. We expect you to collaborate deeply with the Ingest & Storage, Streaming & CDN, and Playback teams, help define the technical direction of video across Zattoo, and join cross‑team initiatives.

THE ADS BACKEND TEAM

The team owns Zattoo’s in‑house Server‑Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) solution: the whole ad pipeline, from deciding which ads to show to tracking every impression, built as a suite of services serving viewers at scale. These are business‑critical services with a direct revenue impact, and we collaborate closely with our sister teams (Ingest & Storage, Streaming & CDN, Playback) and commercial and ad operations stakeholders.

We’re about to take SSAI to the next level: a major re‑architecture. It’s the team’s flagship challenge ahead, and one we want this hire to help lead from the front.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Lead the Ads Backend team, organisationally and technically
• Own the technical vision and architecture of our SSAI platform, with the senior developers
• Contribute hands‑on as technical lead: review designs, raise the bar by example, and step into critical code when needed
• Own the end‑to‑end development process and operational excellence for revenue‑impacting services
• Help shape the technical direction of Zattee’s broader video platform, with the other video teams and our Principal Engineers
• Drive cross‑team initiatives spanning across multiple video teams.
• Represent the team to stakeholders.
• Directly manage 2 – 4 engineers and lead hiring
• Grow, develop, and retain engineering talent

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• 5+ years leading engineering teams
• Strong, current hands‑on engineering: you can design, build, and review production code and act as technical lead
• Proficient in C++/Go
• Experience building highly available services and APIs that scale
• Experience with distributed systems, event‑driven architectures and message queues (e.g. Kafka), and non‑relational databases (e.g. Scylla)
• Testing is a fundamental part of how you build software
• Fluent English, written and verbal
• Experience with advertising technology platforms, ad serving, and dynamic ad insertion (DAI/SSAI)
• Broad experience across the video pipeline (ingest, transcoding, packaging, DRM, streaming, playback)

WHY JOIN US?

At Zattoo, you’re always on firm ground with real freedom to explore. You’ll have the support and opportunity you need to go far, while you’re helping us create a sustainable and entertainment‑filled future for all.

WHAT WE OFFER YOU

• Reward : strong market competitive salary
• Recharge : 30 days vacation plus public holidays
• Regulate : trust based flexible working hours and the option for remote work worldwide for up to 8 weeks per year

Plus:

• We’re sharing: Free access to the best streaming experience on the market
• We're developing: Your own development budget, German classes and Zattoo all‑company hack days
• We’re inclusive: ‘ Zattooies’ are a fun, engaged, and diverse team made up of 47 nationalities
• We’re healthy: Health checks, mental wellbeing support, team sports and more!
• We’re responsible: We are carbon neutral, an active employee Green team, discounted BVG tickets and free bike rentals
• We’re sociable: A calendar of events with fireside chats, lunches, in‑house bar, BBQ’s, monthly socials, summer party and an annual off‑site event

Zattoo enables our users to view indiscriminately and we reflect that in our team too. Regardless of race, gender, sexual …