Senior Data Engineer

The Trade Desk is a global technology company with a mission to create a better, more open internet for everyone through principled, intelligent advertising. Handling over 1 trillion queries per day, our platform operates at an unprecedented scale. We have also built something even stronger and more valuable: an award-winning culture based on trust, ownership, empathy, and collaboration. We value the unique experiences and perspectives that each person brings to The Trade Desk, and we are committed to fostering inclusive spaces where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work every day.

Do you have a passion for solving hard problems at scale? Are you eager to join a dynamic, globally-connected team where your contributions will make a meaningful difference in building a better media ecosystem? Come and see why Fortune magazine consistently ranks The Trade Desk among the best small- to medium-sized workplaces globally.

What we do:

Our data engineers are end-to-end owners who have the opportunity to participate in many aspects of designing, building, and delivering data-focused products for our stakeholders. We believe in building end-to-end modeling pipelines that have a core focus on meeting core KPI’s and being able to validate these KPI’s. We work very closely with data scientists to evaluate modeling solutions up front from both a runtime, accuracy, and reproducibility perspective. Additionally, we prioritize frequent collaboration with data science, product, and other engineering teams to ensure that pipelines and tooling we build are meaningful, scalable, and pleasant to use.

Our system performs every day, 24/7, serving global traffic. We build a distributed system in a highly collaborative environment, utilizing a broad range of technologies. Our data engineers work on finding solutions to algorithmic, optimization, and scale challenges in everything we do.

What you’ll do:

You will work with data scientists, ML pipelines, data processing automation, data processing pipelines, model deployments and experimentation configuration, data quality, data warehousing, data privacy and governance – to name a few.

• You will solve petabyte-scale data challenges across large-scale distributed systems coordinating thousands of servers in cloud and physical data centers around the world.

Senior Engineers contribute to more than our product – they build up our team. Through a combination of mentoring, technical leadership, and/or direct management of small teams, they make others better and raise the bar for those around them. Our Senior Data Engineers are end-to-end owners. You will participate actively in all aspects of designing, building, and delivering data products for our clients.

Who you are:

• You have a sustained track record of making significant, self-directed, and end-to-end contributions to large, impactful data engineering projects. You think beyond just the task at hand to deeply understand the ‘why’ behind what you are doing.
• You understand engineering fundamentals. On our scale, many off-the-shelf techniques and existing technologies (open source and enterprise) do not work. You can work from first principles to evaluate solutions and adapt them to a unique environment.
• You have experience in data engineering.
• You have experience working with data scientists and understand and empathize with their needs and comfort levels.
• You can think through model lifecycles end to end. This covers evaluating model feasibility - both runtime performance and from an accuracy POV; thinking of validation up front and challenging if the validation processes are sound; and model pipeline from training to deployments to setting up experiments.
• You have worked with data modeling, configured AB test experimentation, and have experience working in technologies like SQL, ETL, and technologies similar to Spark, Airflow, SQL, data warehousing, etc...
• You have experience with application deployments using tools analogous to Docker, Kubernetes, etc…
• Bonus points for if you have experience working with deep learning models such as Tensorflow, Pytorch etc...
• Experience with high level languages such as C#, Java, Python, Scala.
• You are a broadly skilled engineer, accustomed to developing web services. You have experience building always-on systems, working across a variety of technologies and service layers.
• You have a product-focused mindset. You have the passion and ability to contribute to the process of discovering what will delight our clients and push forward one of the world’s largest and most influential industries toward a vision of openness, transparency, and evidence-based decision-making.
• You work with confidence and without ego. Our engineers have deep knowledge and exercise a high degree of leadership in their daily work. You have strong opinions that are weakly held, defensible ideas, and advocate for what you believe is right. You are also adept at identifying and evaluating trade-offs, willing to be proven wrong, and quick to walk through fire to support your fellow teammates.
• You value, seek out, and foster diversity. We are a global team from many diverse backgrounds, with different experiences and perspectives. To complement this team, you will welcome ideas that are different from your own and be skilled at finding and building from common ground.
• You are a creative thinker, not bound by “the way things have always been done.”

What you know is less important than how well you learn and innovate. We don't need engineers who know all the answers; we need engineers who can invent the answers no one has thought of yet, to the questions yet to be asked. What and how you can contribute is what’s important to us. Our consideration is not limited by the kind of education you have or the specific technologies you have experience with. Variety of technical challenge is one of the best things about working at The Trade Desk as an engineer, but we do not expect you to know every technology we use when you start. What we care about is that you can learn quickly and solve complex problems using the best tools for the job. Our culture runs much deeper than just having fun together (though, we do that well too...) – the people we want on our team are trust-builders, generous givers, scrappy problem solvers, and gritty pursuers of excellence. Does this sound like you? If so, we welcome your application and the chance to meet you.

The Trade Desk does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm recruiters. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired; such resumes will be deemed the sole property of The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.

(LA JOBS ONLY) The Trade Desk will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Ordinance No. 184652.

(SF JOBS ONLY) Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

NY, CO, CA, and WA residents only: In accordance with NY, CO, CA, and WA law, 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, abilities, 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 sales-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.

The Trade Desk also offers a competitive benefits package. Click here to learn more.

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 $121,500—$222,800 USD.