Distributed Systems Engineer 6 - Ad Serving Platform
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 tierin 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 goal-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 .
What You'll Do
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Technical Direction: 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.
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Low-Latency Distributed Platform: Architect a concurrent platform optimized for high-throughput systems while monitoring, diagnosing, and mitigating tail latencies across core execution paths.
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Networking & Performance Engineering: 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.
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Modular Platform Design: 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.
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Operational Excellence & Resiliency: 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.
Skills & Experience We're Seeking
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Distributed Systems Experience: 10+ years of experience building distributed systems, core backend infrastructure, or high-throughput platforms.
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Low-Latency Systems Engineering: 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.
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Concurrency & Algorithmic Design : 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).
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Networking & I/O Optimization: Understanding of distributed system fundamentals, specifically managing I/O-bound and CPU-bound workloads, network protocols, and data partitioning strategies.
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Performance Measurement & Telemetry: Experience using profiling and diagnostic tools to measure system performance, analyze tail latencies, identify execution hotspots, and build telemetry or monitoring hooks.
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Architecture & Collaboration: Ability to translate complex algorithmic requirements (such as business logic or data science models) into extensible platform components that support multiple teams.
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Modern Development Tooling: Comfort using modern development tools and LLM assistance to accelerate implementation while maintaining architectural oversight and code quality.
Generally, our compensa