Staff Software Engineer, VenturaOS - Content Discovery & Search

The Trade Desk•Bellevue, WA

3d•$137,300 - $251,800

About The Position

The Trade Desk is hiring a Staff Software Engineer for its VenturaOS Content Discovery and Search team, a small, high-impact team building a next-generation TV operating system. Staff Engineers are end-to-end owners who design, implement, and optimize content discovery and search systems within Ventura TV OS cloud services. The work affects how users find and interact with content across the platform, with the goal of providing a seamless, high-quality experience. The role involves working with application teams to build and scale discovery and search features, processing and understanding content to improve personalization, and operating high-performance, low-latency search systems for large and diverse content catalogs. The public API stack uses TypeScript, and backend systems use technologies including Java, Python, Aerospike, and PostgreSQL. The team prioritizes problem-solving, scalable architecture, security expertise, and innovation over familiarity with a particular technology stack.

Requirements

A sustained track record of making significant, self-directed, end-to-end contributions to large and impactful software projects.
Ability to understand the purpose behind engineering work and apply engineering fundamentals.
Ability to evaluate solutions from first principles and adapt technologies to a unique environment.
Understanding of modern data-intensive systems.
Hands-on experience with distributed data processing, data indexing, and building machine learning inference and retraining frameworks.
Passion for discovering personalized and relevant data to improve system effectiveness and user experience.
Ability to learn quickly and solve complex problems using appropriate tools.
Ability to collaborate with confidence and without ego, advocate for defensible ideas, evaluate trade-offs, accept being proven wrong, and support teammates.

Nice To Haves

Experience with search systems such as OpenSearch or Elasticsearch, including indexing, query performance, ranking, relevance tuning, and search quality evaluation.
Experience building recommendation and personalization systems, including candidate retrieval, ranking, and integrating model outputs into production services.
Experience with distributed data processing frameworks such as Apache Spark and platforms such as Databricks, including content ingestion, transformation, feature generation, and pipelines supporting search and recommendations.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and optimize content discovery and search systems within Ventura TV OS cloud services.
Partner with application teams to design, build, and scale content discovery and search features that meet user needs while ensuring performance, relevancy, and scalability.
Process and understand content to enhance personalization and deliver relevant, engaging content.
Build and manage high-performance, low-latency search systems for large and diverse content catalogs.
Ensure efficient indexing, fast queries, and relevant search results.
Make significant, self-directed, end-to-end contributions to large software projects.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision healthcare with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents.
401(k) retirement plan with 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 through the first year and 160 hours thereafter.
Around 13 paid holidays per year.
Employee Stock Purchase Plan allowing employees to purchase company stock at a discount.
Employees may be eligible for stock-based compensation grants based on company and individual performance.
Variable compensation-based incentives and commissions may be offered depending on the role.