Director, Trading (Yield & Inventory)

Locality•New York, NY

1d•$135,000 - $140,000

About The Position

Locality is hiring a hands on Director, Trading (Yield & Inventory) to source, acquire, and optimize video inventory (broadcast + streaming) for resale and programmatic activation. You’ll own trading strategy, deal structuring (PMPs, PGs, programmatic), yield optimization, and short-term margin improvement. You will be partnering tightly with Product, Ad Ops, Sales, and Data Science to develop and execute a supply acquisition & trading strategy to buy inventory (direct and programmatic) that can be resold at a positive margin.

Requirements

6–12+ years in programmatic ad operations, yield, or trading; experience buying/selling video inventory is highly preferred.
Hands-on experience with SSPs/DSPs, FreeWheel/GAM style ad servers, PMP/deal setup, header bidding concepts, and auction mechanics.
Strong SQL + data analysis skills; experience with data stacks (BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks) and scripting (Python/R) for automation.
Comfortable negotiating commercial deals with publishers and partners.
Demonstrated track record of improving yield / margin through price rules, deal packaging, or automation.
Excellent cross-functional collaboration (Product, Data Science, Sales, Ad Ops).

Nice To Haves

Prior experience at a publisher, ad network, or platform is a plus.
Tech Stack Knowledge:
SSPs & exchanges (e.g., Magnite, Xandr/Contextual, PubMatic, OpenX, FreeWheel integrations).
DSPs (for resell or bid testing), programmatic deal config UIs.
Understanding of Ad servers: Google Ad Manager (GAM), FreeWheel.
Data tools: BigQuery/Snowflake, Databricks, Looker/Tableau/LookML, SQL.
Automation / bidding tools: custom decisioning/RTB modules, server-side bidding, pricing automation.
A/B test frameworks and monitoring (observability dashboards)

Responsibilities

Source and negotiate deals with publishers and partners (PMPs, PGs, private deals) and manage relationships with SSPs/SSP integrations.
Build price floors, packaging and deal types (PMP, guaranteed, preferred), and dynamic pricing rules to maximize margin and fill.
Operate programmatic trading across DSP/SSP channels: configure deals, set bid strategies, monitor bidstreams, troubleshoot latency/failures.
Use auction data, historical performance, and predictive models to identify arbitrage and yield opportunities; partner with Data/ML to automate decisioning.
Monitor and optimize yield metrics (e.g., eCPM, margin, fill, win rate, latency) on an ongoing basis and take corrective action.
Work with Product & Engineering to implement trading automation, real-time decisioning, and pricing logic into Locality’s stack.
Package inventory offerings for Sales (audience + geo + time packages) and provide deal-level analytics to support pricing and sales enablement.
Implement experimentation (pricing tests, deal structures) and scale proven approaches.
Own day-to-day P&L / trading ledger for assigned inventory as the role grows (if assigned).
Mentor junior traders and gradually formalize trading ops and playbooks.