Software Engineer, Ads Platform

NewsBreak; Mountain View, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

NewsBreak is seeking a senior backend engineer to own and scale the advertisement platform end-to-end, from the advertiser-facing Ad Manager through the real-time bidding flow. You will be one of a handful of engineers responsible for driving the initiative from problem statement to production revenue, raising technical bar and operational resilience.

The role demands strong ownership on a small team, deep experience with distributed systems, and collaboration across product, modeling, SRE, and

Qualifications

• 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 modeling, caching, streaming/messaging, analytical query engines, and cloud infrastructure (AWS).
• End-to-end ownership of a revenue-critical or transaction-critical system, including accounting, idempotency, reconciliation, and production operations.
• Ability to own a problem from business statement to shipped, measured system without a hand-off spec.
• Strong written communication and cross-functional collaboration; effective with AI-assisted development workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own the bidding flow end-to-end: ad request handling, candidate retrieval, auction server, bid server, and event/attribution pipeline under high-QPS, low-latency constraints.
• Improve yield across own and external auctions: floor pricing, latency budgets, network/exchange migrations, measured by realized CPM.
• Design, build, and operate campaign and line-item modeling, targeting, budgeting, and advertiser-facing APIs.
• Implement and scale outbound bidding into external exchanges: OpenRTB integrations, creative delivery, audience matching, budget/BPS protection, post-bid reconciliation.
• Build real-time metrics, alerting, and discrepancy detection for would-be money paths and diagnose revenue movements quickly.
• Collaborate with product, SRE, ad ops; lead design reviews; document ownership so no critical ads subsystem depends on a single person.
• Support ad quality with policy enforcement, fraud/invalid-traffic detection, and overlapping serving paths.

Skills

Backend engineering

System design

Ownership

Communication

Ambiguity tolerance

Tools

Redis

Kafka

ClickHouse

Trino

Spark

AWS

Job description

Mountain View, California, United States

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 fulfill 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, visitwww.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 realized CPM rather than on shipped features.

Ad Manager (advertiser side): design, build, and operate campaign and line-item modeling, 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 modeling, 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.

As set forth in NewsBreak’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is listed below. 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.