Engineering Manager II, Creatives

Hidden Jobs; United States; Remote; USD 182,000 - 251,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Pension savings

Mental health program

Birthday off

Parental leave

WFH reimbursements

Training budgets

Conference budgets

Job summary

Stack Adapt seeks an experienced backend engineering leader to guide a team responsible for the end-to-end creatives pipeline within our programmatic advertising platform. You will lead development for bid requests, DCO, creative rendering, and complex rule enforcement with a strict 100ms latency SLA.

The role is remote and open to candidates in the United States and Canada. You will mentor engineers, drive architecture decisions, and partner with cross‑functional teams to deliver scalable

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend development on distributed, high‑throughput services.
• 1+ year people management or 2+ years as tech lead.
• Strong CS fundamentals, data structures, and algorithms.
• Experience in adtech/martech and programmatic creative serving.
• Proficiency in at least one backend language (Golang preferred).

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a backend team, conduct 1:1s and growth plans.
• Break down roadmap initiatives into well‑scoped sprints and surface risks.
• Run agile rituals and balance velocity with commitments.
• Stay hands‑on in code reviews and architecture discussions, enforce standards.
• Coordinate cross‑team dependencies and drive on‑call incident resolution.
• Contribute to hiring and adoption of approved AI tooling to raise velocity.

Skills

DCO

Adtech

Rendering

Golang

Java

Kotlin

C++

Rust

Distributed systems

Scrum/Kanban

Job description

**Role overview**

This is a people-management role for an experienced backend engineering leader who will guide a team responsible for the end-to-end creatives pipeline within a programmatic advertising platform. The work centers on serving creatives for bid requests, dynamic creative selection, creative approval and audit workflows, and enforcing complex business rules under a strict 100ms latency SLA at millions of requests per second. The position is remote and open to candidates located anywhere in Canada or the United States.

**Responsibilities**

• Lead and develop a backend team, running 1:1s, giving tactical feedback, supporting growth plans, and partnering with senior leadership on performance conversations.
• Break down roadmap initiatives into well‑scoped sprints, track delivery, and surface risks and delays to stakeholders early.
• Run agile rituals (stand‑ups, planning, retrospectives), monitor velocity and workload balance, and keep commitments realistic.
• Stay hands‑on in code reviews and architecture discussions, uphold coding and testing standards, and guide scalable component‑level design choices.
• Coordinate cross‑team dependencies with Bidding, Data Science, and Product counterparts, and drive incidents to root cause through an on‑call rotation.
• Contribute to hiring, onboarding, and the adoption of approved AI tooling to raise team velocity.

**Requirements**

• Background in adtech or martech, including creative serving in programmatic advertising and familiarity with how channels work together to deliver ads.
• Hands‑on experience with Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO), ad markup, and rendering.
• At least 1 year of people management experience, or 2+ years as a tech lead or mentor for a backend team, with intent to grow into a career manager.
• 5+ years of backend development on distributed systems, microservices, and high‑throughput, low‑latency services.
• Proficiency in at least one backend language, with Golang strongly preferred (Java, Kotlin, C++, or Rust also relevant).
• Strong grasp of computer science fundamentals, data structures, and algorithms, plus comfort with Scrum or Kanban delivery practices.

**Nice to have**

• Frontend development experience and an understanding of how creatives are served and rendered in the browser.
• Experience operating systems under demanding reliability and performance targets.

**Benefits and work setup**

• Remote‑first arrangement across Canada or the United States, with optional access to flexible office space and hubs in London and Toronto.
• Competitive base salary band of 196,000 to 269,500 CAD in Canada or 182,400 to 250,800 USD in the United States.
• Health benefits from day one, retirement or pension savings, and a mental health care program.
• Paid time off that includes a birthday off, parental leave, and work‑from‑home reimbursements.
• Training and onboarding support, conference and course budgets, and access to internal programmatic certifications and continuous learning programs.