Software Engineer 6 - Ad Serving Platform

Netflix•Los Gatos, CA

4d•$499,000 - $900,000

About The Position

At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode - pushing the boundaries of storytelling, global fandom and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition and cutting-edge technology. Come be a part of what’s next. We launched a new ad-supported tier in November 2022 to offer our members more choice in how they consume their content. Our new tier allows us to attract new members at a lower price point while also creating a compelling path for advertisers to reach deeply engaged audiences. Our Team The Ads Serving Platform engineering team sits within the Ad Serving & Decisioning org at Netflix Ads. We own the high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems that power real-time ad decisioning. Our work focuses on the core platform architectures supporting ranking and scoring, auction mechanics, budget and pacing systems, and going-based delivery optimization. We care deeply about how systems work and building resilient systems at scale. We are looking for a senior technical leader to own the technical direction of this platform pod, set the architectural bar, and drive execution on the hardest problems in high-throughput systems optimization at Netflix.

Requirements

10+ years of experience building distributed systems, core backend infrastructure, or high-throughput platforms.
Deep expertise writing clean, highly optimized code in systems languages (e.g., Java, Go, C++, or Rust) with a proven track record of handling high-transaction volumes.
Practical experience with multi-threaded systems design, concurrent programming, and algorithmic design for highly concurrent workloads (including lock-free data structures or lock contention mitigation).
Understanding of distributed system fundamentals, specifically managing I/O-bound and CPU-bound workloads, network protocols, and data partitioning strategies.
Experience using profiling and diagnostic tools to measure system performance, analyze tail latencies, identify execution hotspots, and build telemetry or monitoring hooks.
Ability to translate complex algorithmic requirements (such as business logic or data science models) into extensible platform components that support multiple teams.
Comfort using modern development tools and LLM assistance to accelerate implementation while maintaining architectural oversight and code quality.

Responsibilities

Help drive the overall technical direction of the ad-serving platform.
Partner across engineering teams to ensure the ecosystem meets SLAs, SLOs, and uptime requirements.
Architect a concurrent platform optimized for high-throughput systems while monitoring, diagnosing, and mitigating tail latencies across core execution paths.
Work with I/O-bound and CPU-bound workloads.
Profile and tune network and system layers, and build automated performance-benchmarking frameworks within the CI/CD pipeline to identify latency regressions.
Build a modular architecture that enables other teams to build on top of the platform.
Create entry points for external components like model-serving runtimes, budget/pacing systems, and programmatic demand engines that handle outbound networking and QPS management.
Architect a system that is straightforward to operate and maintain.
Maintain a high standard for distributed systems design and resiliency, ensuring graceful degradation during traffic spikes or live events.