What We Do

Our Software Engineers are end-to-end owners who participate in designing, building, and delivering data-focused products for our stakeholders.

At The Trade Desk, we focus on building backend infrastructure with an emphasis on quality at scale. Whether we are building parts of our client-facing applications, internal tools for our team members, or model pipelines for bidding optimizations, we ensure we have the infrastructure, development practices, and tools to do it right and efficiently.

Our systems operate 24/7, serving global traffic. We build a distributed system in a highly collaborative environment, utilizing a broad range of technologies. Our backend developers tackle algorithmic, optimization, and scale challenges in everything we do.

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What You’ll Do

Some of the work you will be doing to help us deliver on our mission includes:

• Design, build, deliver, and own full lifecycle development software from inception to production
• Demonstrate a strong understanding of the entire software development lifecycle
• Drive complex changes involving multiple components
• Deliver quality changes, including automated tests, metrics, and monitoring
• Collaborate with team members to deliver features
• Guide and review changes to product features in alignment with product roadmaps
• Implement and maintain product features
• Build components and processes that are regularly used by others
• Build execution plans incorporating user data, observations, and market insight
• Validate changes to ensure high-quality product releases
• Work in a distributed systems environment
• Understand the business objectives behind the code
• Learn and apply system architecture fundamentals through self-directed learning
• Participate in and lead projects with a high level of technical ambiguity
• Contribute to developing comprehensive success criteria
• Lead others through example, mentorship, and teaching
• Participate in hiring activities
• Use data to analyze and communicate the impact of your work on operational efficiency

We are a global team with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. You welcome ideas different from your own and work to build from common ground. You value, seek out, and foster both visible and invisible dimensions of diversity.

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Who You Are

Our culture is deeper than simply having fun together (though we do that well, too). We take pride in our engineers being trust-builders, generous givers, scrappy problem solvers, and gritty pursuers of excellence.

You do not have to meet all the requirements below, but people who meet most will likely be successful in this role:

• You are comfortable working on an agile, distributed team across multiple time zones and continents
• You communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences
• You have a solid understanding of computer science and engineering fundamentals
• You have experience working with distributed systems
• You are proficient in one or more programming languages such as C#, Java, C, C++, Python, SQL, or Scala
• You have familiarity with software development tools such as Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Rider, and version control systems (Git, Perforce)
• You have 7+ years of software development engineering experience
• You have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science or a related engineering field, or equivalent practical experience
  • We recognize not everyone has equal access to educational opportunities; what matters to us is your ability to contribute
• You have nice-to-have experience in one or more areas:
  • Database engines (Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres, Aerospike, Vertica, Redis)
  • Building microservices
  • Operating systems and cloud technologies
  • Kubernetes
  • Kafka

A wide variety of technical opportunities is one of the best things about being a software engineer at The Trade Desk. We do not expect you to know every technology we use before joining. What we care about is your ability to learn quickly and solve complex problems using the best tools for the job.

We are not seeking engineers who know all the answers; we need engineers who can invent answers no one has thought of yet and find answers to questions not yet asked.