Software Engineer, Ads Platform

Francisco Partners; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 155,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

NewsBreak is seeking a senior backend engineer to own and scale the advertising platform end-to-end, from the advertiser-facing Ad Manager through the real-time bidding flow that monetizes our traffic. You will be a primary builder for our expansion into external demand and supply.

This is a senior, high-ownership role on a small team. You will raise the technical bar and operational resilience of the systems you touch, beyond just adding throughput.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating distributed, high-QPS, low-latency production services.
• Experience with designing and operating revenue-critical systems.
• Strong knowledge of caching, streaming/messaging, and analytics engines.
• Ability to own end-to-end from problem to production revenue.

Responsibilities

• Own the serving path end to end: ad request handling, candidate retrieval, auction server, bid server, and event/attribution pipeline.
• Improve yield across internal and external auctions, with focus on CPM.realized.
• Design, build, and operate campaign and line-item modelling, targeting, budgeting, and billing integrity.
• Scale outbound bidding into external exchanges via OpenRTB integrations and ensure latency budgets.
• Build real-time metrics, alerts, and revenue-discrepancy tooling.
• Collaborate with product, SRE, and ad ops to share ownership and reduce single points of failure.
• Support ad quality through policy enforcement and fraud/invalid-traffic detection.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Low-latency

Java/Go/C++

Tools

Redis

Kafka

ClickHouse

Trino

Spark

AWS

Job description

About NewsBreak

Founded in 2015, NewsBreak is the Content Intelligence platform shaping the future content economy. With over 40 million monthly active users, our flagship platform delivers highly personalized local news and information powered by advanced AI, recommendation systems, and adtech.

Recognized by Fast Company as #32 on the Top Workplaces for Innovators, we’re proud to be Great Place to Work® certified and home to a dynamic team of technologists, product innovators, and business leaders who are passionate about solving meaningful challenges at scale.

Together, we reached unicorn status in 2021, and we remain committed to continuing this high-growth trajectory with the right team to fulfil our mission: building the infrastructure layer for content intelligence.

If you’re inspired to dream big, innovate fast, and make a difference, we’d love to hear from you! For more information, visit www.newsbreak.com/about

About the role

Own and scale the backend of NewsBreak's advertising platform end to end — from the advertiser-facing Ad Manager through the real-time bidding flow that monetizes our traffic — and act as a primary builder for our expansion into external demand and external supply.

This is a senior, high-ownership role on a small team. You will be one of a handful of people who can take an ads initiative from problem statement through production revenue, and you are expected to raise the technical bar and the operational resilience of the systems you touch, not just add throughput to them.

Responsibilities

• Bidding flow (traffic side): own the serving path end to end — ad request handling, candidate retrieval, auction server, bid server, and the event/attribution pipeline — under high-QPS, low-latency constraints.
• Auction optimization: improve yield across both our own auction and external auctions — floor pricing, timeout and latency budgets, network/exchange migrations — with results measured on realised CPM rather than on shipped features.
• Ad Manager (advertiser side): design, build, and operate campaign and line-item modelling, targeting, budget and pacing control, spend accounting and billing integrity, and advertiser-facing APIs and workflows.
• DSP build-out: implement and scale outbound bidding into external exchanges: OpenRTB integrations with SSPs/exchanges, creative delivery, audience matching, bid pricing and shading, budget/QPS protection, and post-bid reconciliation.
• Defend the revenue path: build real-time metrics, alerting, and discrepancy detection for the money path, and diagnose revenue movements quickly when they happen.
• Collaborate and de-risk: partner with product, algorithm/modeling, SRE, and ad ops; lead design reviews; document and share ownership so no critical ads subsystem depends on one person.
• Ad quality where it meets serving: support creative and landing-page policy enforcement, fraud/cloaking detection, and invalid-traffic signals as they intersect the serving path.

Requirements

Required

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating distributed, high-QPS, low-latency production services (Java, Go, C++, or similar).
• Strong system design fundamentals: service decomposition, data modelling, caching (e.g., Redis), streaming/messaging (e.g., Kafka), analytical query engines (e.g., ClickHouse, Trino, Spark), and cloud infrastructure (AWS).
• Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of a revenue-critical or transaction-critical system, including correctness of money — accounting, idempotency, reconciliation — and production operational responsibility.
• Comfort with ambiguity and full ownership on a small team: able to go from a business problem to a shipped, measured system without a spec handed down.
• Strong written communication and cross-functional collaboration; effective working with AI-assisted development workflows.

Preferred

• Direct advertising-domain experience — DSP, SSP, ad exchange, or ad server — including OpenRTB, real-time auctions, header bidding, budget pacing, bid shading, and attribution/conversion measurement.
• Experience integrating with Google Ad Manager / Ad Exchange, Meta or Google ad SDKs, or major mobile exchanges.
• Experience integrating ML model serving (CTR/CVR prediction, ranking) into an auction under latency constraints.
• Experience with brand safety, ad fraud, or invalid-traffic detection.

Annual Base Pay Range

$155,000 — $260,000 USD

Pay may vary based on a number of factors including job-related skills, level, experience, geographic location and relevant education or training. At NewsBreak, we design our overall rewards package to attract top talents. Depending on the position, the role may also be eligible for discretionary bonus and options. Your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process.

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