Lead Staff Software Engineer - Partner Platform

The Trade Desk; Denver (CO); On-site; USD 137,000 - 252,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock-based compensation

Comprehensive healthcare

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

13 paid holidays per year

Job summary

The Trade Desk is seeking a Staff-level engineering leader to shape and guide a scalable, partner-facing platform. You will drive architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and contribute hands-on across TypeScript/React front ends and C#/.NET GraphQL services.

Join a world-class team working on federated GraphQL, RESTful APIs, and modular micro-frontends, with a strong emphasis on security, reliability, and developer experience.

Qualifications

• Proven track record leading complex software initiatives from definition through production.
• Experience as Staff-level technical authority while contributing code.
• Experience leading engineers of varying levels and growing engineers.
• Ability to turn ambiguous product vision into architecture and executable delivery plan.

Responsibilities

• Define technical vision and architectural roadmap for partner-facing platform.
• Lead scalable platform design across GraphQL, REST, SDKs, and frontend components.
• Contribute through prototypes, production code, and reviews in TS/React and C#/.NET GraphQL services.
• Set standards for schema, API consistency, security, and observability.
• Guide cross-team decisions on governance, tooling, and architecture.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

GraphQL

TypeScript

React

C#

SQL

API design

Education

Degree in computer science or related discipline

Tools

Kubernetes

GraphQL federation

REST APIs

SQL Server

Job description

The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world's leading independent platform for digital advertising, with nearly 4,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet - from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more. Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world's brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly. The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges - from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you're driven to solve meaningful challenges, we'd love to meet you.

What you'll do

Technical leadership

• Define the technical vision and architectural roadmap for TheTradeDesk'spartner-facing platform
• Lead the design of a scalable platform spanning federated GraphQL, RESTful APIs, SDKs, modular micro-frontends, integration workflows, developer tools, and polished web experiences.
• Make hands-on contributions through prototypes, production code, architecture reviews, and code reviews across TypeScript/React front ends and C#/.NET GraphQL services.
• Establish standards for schema and API consistency, backward compatibility, authorization, security, privacy, reliability, observability, Kubernetes-based operations, and SQL data modeling.
• Simplify the partner journey from discovery and onboarding through testing, certification, launch, and ongoing optimization.
• Turn shared needs across advertisers, data providers, publishers, and sellers into reusable platform services and front-end components rather than one-off integrations.
• Guide cross-team decisions on schema governance, platform tooling, and architecture, balancing usability, scalability, reliability, security, privacy, and delivery speed.

Execution and influence

• Partner with Product Management, Design, and engineering teams to shape the roadmap, technical approach, and delivery priorities.
• Break down ambiguous, cross-team problems into clear technical plans, milestones, dependencies, and risks.
• Drive alignment across teams that contribute to or consume the platform, communicating technical decisions and trade-offs clearly.
• Define and improve measures of platform health and partner success, including integration time, adoption, API reliability, and developer experience.
• Promotehigh standardsforproduction ofreadiness, operational ownership, and continuous improvement.

Engineering excellence

• Raise the engineering bar through thoughtful design and code reviews, technical mentorship, and practical guidance.
• Coach engineersinsystem design, debugging, delivery, and operating services in production.
• Lead by example as a trusted, hands-on technical partner who helps teams solve difficult problems and make durable decisions.
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive environment where engineers share knowledge, challenge assumptions constructively, and take ownership of outcomes.

Who you are

You do not need to meet every qualification below. We are interested in candidates who demonstrate most of these capabilities and can learn the rest.

• You have a sustained record of leading complex, high-impact software initiatives from definition through production operation.
• You act as a Staff-level technical authority while remaining capable of and willing to contribute directly to the codebase.
• You have experience leading engineers with different levels of experience and helping senior engineers and technical leads grow.
• You have led initiatives involving several engineering and business teams, particularly where shared platform decisions affected teams outside your immediate organization.
• You can turn an ambiguous product vision into a coherent architecture and an executable delivery plan.
• You have strong knowledge of distributed systems, cloud platforms, service-oriented architecture, and modern software delivery practices.
• You have experience designing durable APIs - GraphQL especially, including federation and schema evolution - as well as REST or event-driven integration interfaces.
• You are experienced in modern frontend development: TypeScript, React, component-driven architecture, and data-rich single-page applications, ideally at monorepo scale.
• You are proficient in C# and TypeScript/JavaScript, and comfortable with SQL and relational data modeling (SQL Server or similar).
• You understand the needs of developers integrating with an external platform, including authentication and authorization, documentation, testing, versioning, observability, and supportability.
• You can evaluate technical trade-offs involving usability, scalability, reliability, security, privacy, and delivery speed.
• You communicate effectively with engineers, product leaders, commercial stakeholders, and external partners.
• You lead with confidence and low ego. You advocate for well-reasoned decisions, invite competing perspectives, and change course when the evidence supports it.
• You have significant professional software engineering experience, typically 10 or more years, or an equivalent record of technical impact.
• You have experience directly managing engineers or a clear record of comparable people leadership.
• You have a degree in computer science or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience that would be especially valuable

• Building developer platforms,app marketplaces, or self-service onboarding systems.
• Developing full-stack applications and data-rich partner experiences with React and .NET (or comparable stacks).
• Working with federated GraphQL (Apollo Federation, HotChocolate, or similar) and schema governance across multiple teams.
• Building or operating micro-frontend architectures and large frontend monorepos with modern build tooling (Bazel, pnpm workspaces, webpack/Vite).
• Creating public APIs, SDKs, technical documentation systems, sandboxes, or automated certification tooling.
• Working with identity, authorization, consent, data governance, or privacy-sensitive systems - for example, identity solutions such as UID2/EUID, persona-based access control, or entitlement systems.
• Operating distributed services on Kubernetes and containers across multiple public clouds (AWS and Azure), with relational databases, feature-flag and experimentation systems, and modern observability tooling (Prometheus, New Relic, OpenTelemetry, or similar).
• Working in advertising technology or with publishers, data providers, measurement partners, retailers, brands, or agencies.
• Using AI-assisted experiences to improve documentation discovery, integration support, or developer productivity.

In accordance with various US state laws, the range provided is the Trade Desk's reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role. The actual amount may differ based on non-discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, and location. All employees may be eligible to become The Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock-based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance. The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as variable compensation-based incentives and commissions. Plus, expected benefits for this role include comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, and vision) with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents, retirement benefits such as a 401k plan and company match, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, well-being benefits, reimbursement for certain tuition expenses, parental leave, sick time of 1 hour per 30 hours worked, vacation time for full-time employees up to 120 hours thru the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year. Employees can also purchase The Trade Desk stock at a discount through The Trade Desk's Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

Note: Interns are not eligible for variable incentive awards such as stock-based compensation, retirement plan, vacation, tuition reimbursement or parental leave

At the Trade Desk, Base Salary is one part of our competitive total compensation and benefits package and is determined using a salary range. The base salary range for this role is $137,300 — $251,800 USD

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

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