Tech Lead, Ad Exchange

Gum Gum is The Mindset Company TM transforming advertising. We’re an advertising technology company delivering results by matching brands with people in the right mindset in the moments that matter. Our platform is powered by the Mindset Graph, our AI-driven data engine that processes billions of real-time contextual, creative, environmental, and historical signals to match every ad with the most receptive audience.

The result is advertising that drives meaningful outcomes for advertisers and publishers, and is more relevant for consumers.

We were founded in 2008 and are headquartered in Santa Monica, California, operating in over 19 markets across North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Our principles guide our work every day and are as follows:

• Customer-Obsessed: We’re focused on advertising solutions that solve needs and drive success for clients and partners.
• Make it Happen: We have a bias for action and take ownership to deliver results.
• Always Innovate: We push boundaries with creativity and technology.
• Foster Belonging: We ensure colleagues feel included, supported, and empowered to thrive.

The Ad Exchange engineering team is responsible for the technical development and operations of our Ad Exchange technology. The Ad Exchange software handles a high volume of requests (40 million requests per minute) and is a highly distributed Java web service. Our team currently uses technologies such as Java, Spring, MySQL, Kafka, Aerospike, Scylla Db, Memcached, and more.

This role will lead their team to success, planning and executing projects across the stack by defining technical requirements, estimating level of effort, scoping projects to meet deadlines, and managing agile processes. The Tech Lead will work closely with product owners, engineering teams, and other stakeholders to deliver projects on time and with high quality. This will require identifying and resolving risks and blockers, reviewing code, and providing architectural guidance to ensure scalable, maintainable solutions.

You’ll be expected to take ownership of complex features, mentor engineers, and influence technical direction.

The Tech Lead will also begin to develop management and leadership skills, fostering relationships with their team and others they work with, setting best practices, giving feedback, playing an active role with hiring and training, and fostering a deep knowledge of the business.

Note:

Gum Gum fosters a flexible work environment, offering Gum Gummers the ability to work either in-office or remotely/from home. However, for occasional in-person collaboration, we kindly ask that this position be located within a 'commutable' distance to our office.

• Lead the design and delivery of high-volume, high-traffic ad exchange web services leveraging Java, Spring, MySQL, ScyllaDB, and Aerospike.
• Take full ownership of the system lifecycle, defining the long-term architectural roadmap and continuously experimenting with new frameworks to optimize performance.
• Establish technical guidelines, set development best practices, and conduct comprehensive design and code reviews to maintain high-quality standards.
• Translate complex stakeholder and customer requests into clear technical requirements, mapping engineering efforts directly to business impact.
• Own the agile process (scrums, sprint planning, retros), accurately estimate levels of effort, and break down large initiatives into actionable Jira tasks.
• Foster a high-performing culture by conducting thoughtful 1:1s, providing actionable feedback, and delegating impactful tasks to scale team capabilities.
• Partner with management to optimize the interview process, design technical evaluation questions, and spearhead robust onboarding plans for new hires.
• Act as the primary technical point of contact, seamlessly collaborating with cross-functional teams to align timelines and proactively clear engineering bottlenecks.

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep technical proficiency in Java and the Spring Framework.
  • Note:
    
    A Computer Science degree is a definite plus, but relevant production experience is what we value most.
• P…