Senior Software Engineer

Nexxen•San Carlos, CA

1d•$170,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Software Engineer will join the Nexxen DSP Software Development team as a senior technical contributor and trusted leader on mission-critical, high-throughput services. Our DSP processes billions of real-time transactions a day with strict sub-100ms SLAs, so performance, scalability, and operational excellence will guide every project you take on. You will independently translate ambiguous business problems into simple, robust technical designs, raise the engineering bar through code review and mentorship, and champion the application of the latest technologies, including AI, to solve hard AdTech problems. This role will be based in our San Carlos local office. Our team follows a hybrid schedule, working in the office three days a week and remotely for the rest.

Requirements

Expert Java engineer with 7+ years building backend systems at scale
In-depth knowledge of the JVM ecosystem, including garbage collection, profiling, and tuning to achieve low latency and high throughput
Strong grounding in distributed computing—REST APIs, fault tolerance, scalability, consistency, and resilience
Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and systems design fundamentals
Proven ability to independently turn ambiguous business problems into simple, pragmatic technical designs
SRE mindset: you take ownership of what you ship and care deeply about reliability, observability, and operational excellence in production
Track record of code review and technical mentorship that raises the bar for mid- and junior-level developers
Detail-oriented in business and technical requirements gathering; comfortable challenging assumptions and clarifying scope
Strong experience with automated acceptance testing and a test-first mindset
Solid SQL/RDBMS skills and hands-on experience with NoSQL distributed databases such as Aerospike, Cassandra, Redis, or KeyDB
Hands-on experience with real-time streaming pipelines using Kafka, Kinesis, or similar technologies
Strong understanding of operating systems and significant experience working in Linux environments
Experience with web/application servers such as Tomcat
Solid grasp of networking and load balancing techniques
Production experience with Docker and Kubernetes
Proficiency with Git and CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI/CD or equivalent)
Experience working in Agile / DevOps environments and a strong team-player attitude—willing to roll up your sleeves and help teammates ship
Strong verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences
Strong interest in solving problems in AdTech and a desire to grow into a subject-matter expert in the space
Strong interest in applying the latest technology, particularly AI, to technical and AdTech problems

Nice To Haves

Prior AdTech industry experience strongly preferred
Familiarity with Python or Scala is a plus

Responsibilities

Serve as a senior engineer on a talented team building critical, high-performance, large scale services for Nexxen DSP programmatic integrations and platform products
Independently transform vague business requirements into simple, well-reasoned technical designs and drive them from concept through production
Partner closely with the Product team, the Engineering Manager, and cross-functional teams stakeholders to shape requirements, scope, and roadmap
Take full ownership of complex initiatives, end-to-end design, implementation, integration, rollout, and post-launch operation
Write solid, testable, and performant code for services supporting high throughput and low latency (< 70ms response time)
Set the technical bar through code reviews and pair programming, inspiring mid- and junior-level engineers to write simple, testable, and performant code by example
Mentor and uplevel teammates; act as a force multiplier for the broader engineering organization
Apply an SRE mindset to production deployments—observability, on-call readiness, incident response, capacity planning, and continuous reliability improvements
Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in large-scale distributed systems that process billions of transactions per day with strict SLAs
Drive increased test, monitoring, and automation coverage across services, including automated acceptance testing
Collaborate on technical design across teams and contribute to architectural decisions for the DSP platform
Explore and prototype the application of emerging technologies, especially AI, to solve technical and AdTech problems
Operate within Agile / DevOps practices in a fast-paced environment where you can quickly see the results of your work
Lead and participate in planning, grooming, and architectural review sessions with the team and stakeholders