Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Custom Solutions

The Trade Desk is a global technology company with a mission to create a better, more open internet for everyone through principled, intelligent advertising. Handling over 1 trillion queries per day, our platform operates at an unprecedented scale. We have also built something even stronger and more valuable: an award-winning culture based on trust, ownership, empathy, and collaboration. We value the unique experiences and perspectives that each person brings to The Trade Desk, and we are committed to fostering inclusive spaces where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work every day.

Do you have a passion for solving hard problems at scale? Are you eager to join a dynamic, globally- connected team where your contributions will make a meaningful difference in building a better media ecosystem? Come and see why Fortune magazine consistently ranks The Trade Desk among the best small- to medium-sized workplaces globally.

About the Role:

As a Senior Manager, Software Engineering at The Trade Desk, you will lead globally distributed engineering teams building and operating large-scale, highly available systems. You will set direction, establish strong operating mechanisms, and maintain a high bar for engineering excellence, balancing execution speed with reliability, quality, and long-term maintainability. You'll work closely with cross-functional partners to deliver meaningful business outcomes while growing leaders and strengthening team culture.

What we do:

We trust our engineering managers to grow, empower, and support our greatest asset, our people. At The Trade Desk, every opportunity to engage internal and external stakeholders is unique.

In this role, you will manage teams responsible for developing custom solutions and strategic integrations for our major clients. You will partner across Engineering, Product, Business Development, and Technical Account Management to incorporate stakeholder needs and drive strategic outcomes. Your teams will shape their charter in alignment with the business pipeline, supporting some of our largest and most impactful client opportunities.

Our system performs every day, 24/7, serving global traffic. It's important that we focus on quality at scale in an agile environment based on collaboration, ownership, and trust. Our engineering managers are there to build trust with our talented engineers, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and ensure they are motivated and productive, while having fun and enjoying every day.

What you will do:

* 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), build a culture of high standards, ownership, and continuous improvement.

* Define and execute the technical vision and strategy for your area, balance 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, ensure 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, postmortems, 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 (e.g., 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 tradeoffs, remove blockers, and ensure high-quality outcomes.

Who you are:

* 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/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 tradeoffs 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…