Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Custom Solutions

Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Custom Solutions

The Trade Desk is a global technology company that creates a better, open internet through principled, intelligent advertising. Our platform processes over 1 trillion queries per day, and we pride ourselves on a culture of trust, ownership, empathy, and collaboration.

As a Senior Manager, Software Engineering, you will lead globally distributed engineering teams that build and operate large‑scale, highly available systems. You will set direction, establish strong operating mechanisms, and maintain a high bar for engineering excellence while balancing execution speed with reliability, quality, and long‑term maintainability. You’ll work closely with cross‑functional partners to deliver meaningful business outcomes, grow leaders, and strengthen team culture.

• Own end‑to‑end delivery of complex initiatives with ambiguous requirements, align stakeholders, and drive execution to measurable outcomes.
• Lead and develop multiple teams across regions (including people leaders and senior technical leaders), building a culture of high standards, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Define and execute the technical vision and strategy for your area, balancing near‑term delivery with reusable foundations and long‑term platform leverage.
• Make portfolio‑level decisions on what to build, what to standardize, and what to decline, ensuring capacity is aligned to the highest‑impact work.
• Drive architectural direction and quality at scale through reference architectures, integration patterns, data contracts, and appropriate security/privacy guardrails.
• Establish clear operating mechanisms for intake and prioritization, delivery governance, escalation paths, post‑mortems, and support models for production systems.
• Partner effectively across Product, Solution Consulting, Technical Account Management, Business Development, Data Science, and platform engineering to align roadmaps, manage expectations, and resolve escalations.
• Define success metrics and instrumentation to measure quality and business impact, such as adoption/usage, reliability, support load, and stakeholder outcomes.
• Own resource planning across regions, hiring strategy, org design, performance management, and succession planning to build a durable leadership bench.
• Stay close to architecture and delivery to guide trade‑offs, remove blockers, and ensure high‑quality outcomes.

• 13+ years of software development experience, including building and maintaining production systems.
• 5+ years of experience managing managers and/or leading multiple teams through senior technical leaders.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related engineering field (or equivalent experience).
• Strong technical background in distributed systems, API design, and cloud infrastructure, able to guide architecture and trade‑offs at scale.
• Proven ability to run complex, cross‑functional programs with high ambiguity, competing priorities, and external stakeholders.
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management, able to align teams and drive decisions with clarity and credibility.
• Deep understanding of modern software development practices (engineering excellence, operational rigor, delivery mechanisms).
• Experience operating in an Agile environment across multiple concurrent initiatives and geographically distributed teams.
• Ad‑tech domain experience is a plus.

The Trade Desk is an equal‑opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.