Senior Software Engineer, Ad Auctions

About the role

You will lead a team focused on Roku's Ads Auction and Marketplace, driving real‑time multi‑objective optimization to maximize yield and gross profit. The role blends deep technical judgment with cross‑functional collaboration to shape the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the advertising ecosystem.

Key responsibilities

• Lead design, implementation, and evolution of real‑time ads auction systems powering Roku’s CTV advertising.
• Own and enhance core auction capabilities such as ad pod construction, bid evaluation, ranking, pricing, pacing, budget enforcement, and frequency capping.
• Build low‑latency, highly reliable distributed services that operate at massive scale, serving billions of ad opportunities with strict latency and uptime requirements.
• Design auction logic that balances viewer experience, advertiser performance, publisher yield, and platform revenue.
• Develop and optimize SSP‑side auction mechanisms and integrate with multiple DSPs, programmatic demand sources, and direct‑sold campaigns.
• Partner closely with product managers, data scientists, engineering, inventory, and product teams to define vision, strategy, and deliver the roadmap.

Required profile

• Proven leader capable of combining deep technical expertise with strong cross‑functional collaboration.
• Experience building large‑scale, low‑latency distributed systems.
• Background in real‑time multi‑objective optimization, machine learning, reinforcement learning, AI, control systems, and auction dynamics.
• Ability to define product vision and strategy and translate it into actionable roadmaps.

Required skills

• Machine learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Control systems
• Optimization techniques
• Distributed systems
• Real‑time systems
• Advertising auction mechanisms