Staff Software Engineer, Demand Bidder, Ad Serving Platform

Roku • San Jose, CA

3d • $195,000 - $408,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Roku is hiring a Senior Software Engineer at Staff scope for its Demand Bidder team within the Ad Serving organization. The team builds and operates high-throughput, low-latency systems that serve relevant ads across tens of thousands of campaigns, supporting targeting, scoring, bidding, auctions, measurement, and other functions. The platform powers Roku’s ad monetization across video, display, and native ad formats, with decisions that have direct revenue impact.

The role will help scale and evolve this large, real-time decisioning platform as Roku onboards new businesses. The team is advancing its architecture, including its pacing and scoring/ML engines and modularization, while maintaining a high reliability bar. The engineer will rapidly develop an understanding of the complex production ecosystem and take ownership of important initiatives.

The position involves designing, building, and operating core components of a distributed system with strict latency requirements; owning subsystems through architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, on-call, and ongoing evolution; and collaborating with engineers, applied scientists, and partners across engineering, product, and business. The role also includes mentoring engineers, improving engineering and operational standards, and diagnosing complex issues in a concurrent, multi-region system.

Roku generally has teams work in the office Monday through Thursday, with Fridays generally flexible for remote work. Some roles or office locations may require five days of in-office attendance.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale, low-latency distributed systems; ideally including a system substantially built from the ground up.
• Demonstrated track record of owning complex systems end-to-end: design, build, operation, on-call, and iteration based on production feedback.
• Ability to ramp quickly on unfamiliar, complex, large codebases and become productive.
• Experience evolving and refactoring live, business-critical systems without compromising uptime or correctness.
• Strong command of Java and a solid foundation in algorithms, data structures, concurrency or multithreading, and performance optimization.
• Practical experience with distributed caching, high-throughput messaging or streaming systems, and SQL or NoSQL datastores.
• Comfort operating cloud infrastructure such as GCP or AWS at scale.
• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• High ownership, self-motivation, critical thinking, and comfort operating with ambiguity.
• Collaborative, team-oriented approach; low ego; openness to critical feedback and others’ approaches.
• Experience using AI coding assistants such as Claude Code or Cursor in real production work to accelerate design, implementation, debugging, and understanding unfamiliar codebases.
• Ability to use AI tools responsibly, verify their output, and maintain a high bar for correctness and understanding of shipped work.

Nice To Haves

• Exposure to applying statistical, control-theory, or ML-driven techniques within production decision-making systems.
• Real-time bidding or ad-tech domain experience.
• Deep experience in adjacent high-stakes, low-latency domains such as trading systems, large-scale ranking or recommendation, matchmaking, or risk/fraud systems.
• Informed opinions about how to leverage AI coding assistants and curiosity about applying AI to system health monitoring, issue triage, or agentic workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate core components of a large-scale, real-time distributed decisioning system with strict latency requirements.
• Take end-to-end ownership of specific subsystems, including architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, on-call, and long-term evolution.
• Build a working mental model of a highly distributed, complex production system and make high-leverage contributions.
• Identify opportunities to continuously evolve the system and tooling.
• Partner with engineers and applied scientists working at the intersection of distributed systems and statistical or ML-driven decision-making.
• Diagnose and resolve subtle issues, including timing- or statistics-related issues, in a highly concurrent, multi-region distributed system.
• Mentor other engineers and raise engineering rigor, testing discipline, and operational excellence across the team.
• Communicate with technical and non-technical stakeholders and drive alignment across engineering, product, and business partners.

Benefits

• Health insurance, including healthcare options that may include medical, dental, and vision coverage, depending on location and role.
• Equity awards.
• Life insurance.
• Disability benefits.
• Parental leave.
• Wellness benefits, including global access to mental health and financial wellness support and resources.
• Paid time off in accordance with local leave policies and personal needs.
• Local benefits may include accident coverage, commuter benefits, and retirement options such as 401(k) or pension, depending on location and role.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior