Director, Engineering (Performance)

At Index Exchange, we're reinventing how digital advertising works-at scale. As a global advertising supply-side platform, we empower the world's leading media owners and marketers to thrive in a programmatic, privacy-first ecosystem. Our platform is trusted by some of the world's largest brands and media owners and plays a crucial role in the business model of the internet.

At the core of it all is our engineering-first culture. Our engineers tackle internet-scale problems across tight-knit, global teams. From moving petabytes of data and optimizing with AI to making real-time infrastructure decisions, Indexers have the agency and influence to shape the future of advertising. We move fast, build thoughtfully, and stay grounded in our core values.

About The Role:

At the heart of Index is the Exchange Platform, handling more than 550 billion real-time auctions every day (Google processes 8.5 billion searches per day for comparison). The Director, Exchange Platform will be responsible for the operation, innovation and invention of the exchange platform, leading a world class team.

What We're Looking For:

A pragmatic and strategic technology leader:

• Define the roadmap for performance profiling, tooling, optimization, and latency reduction across the entire exchange platform.
• Learn and understand the business vision and market opportunity for the company
• Exceptional hands-on technology leader to 'drive and own' the performance optimization, vision, direction, and technology roadmap for system performance and optimization for all of Index Exchange
• Design, develop, and drive implementation of all performance- and latency-critical services and pipelines in our exchange
• Design, develop, and drive implementation of performance profiling and optimization tooling and frameworks, and integrate same into our build and validation pipelines
• Establish and advance best practices and standards for performance and latency critical pipelines, and ensure that all Index engineering teams subscribe to same
• Manage all requirements related to performance and latency metrics and observability
• Develop and champion the near-term targets against long term strategy for continuous performance and latency improvements for our exchange
• Make significant contributions while working cross functionally across engineering on the strategic technology roadmap for the company

A builder, enabler, and amplifier of world class engineering teams:

• As a key member of our core architecture team of the most senior technologists in the company, lead the architecture and design for all technology platform modules and products for the company, with a particular focus on pervasive performance and latency optimization, profiling, and observability
• Core member of team to build and evolve technology planning, design, and architectural process for all of Index, driving collaborative engagement and enabling innovation from the entire organization
• As a key member of our technology leadership team, organize and drive integrated release planning and coordination and design across platform, software, analytics, and infrastructure teams
• Drive alignment across all agile engineering teams, with a strong focus on best in class architectural and technology standards and engineering best practices
• Design and build quality, performance, security, efficiency, and reliability in from day one, and inspire other team members to do the same
• Prototype, vet, and champion new technology introductions to our platform
• Effectively represent our performance capabilities and strategies to diverse internal teams, as well as to external partners and customers
• A respected technical role model and mentor for engineering teams, leading, motivating, and challenging a diverse globally distributed technology team

Growth focused architectural leadership:

• Develop technology strategy, clearly articulate and drive delivery as a core member of a technology architecture leadership team
• Build, maintain, and drive the technology roadmap, in close collaboration with Chief Architect and other architects
• Champion quality and data driven decisions, development, and delivery
• Pragmatic technology leadership, balancing long-term R&D investments with near-term execution and business impact
• Communicate design and decisions and influence technology and product direction of peers and executive leadership
• Make and meet commitments, communicating changes in plans whether they be design or timeline modifications honestly and transparently

Leadership role model and exemplar:

• Excellent communication skills, which include active listening and the ability to present complex ideas in concise written and verbal descriptions which are easily understood by both technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong people skills - able to communicate with colleagues while simultaneously building credibility and rapport. Also, able to modify one's behavioral style to respond to the needs of others while maintaining own objectives
• A technologist's technologist - able to lead high performance technology teams by example
• Ability to manage, build and complement high performance teams with a natural ability to level-up high-performing engineers
• A strong leader who can lead, manage, and inspire teams both locally and remotely in today's increasingly virtual world
• An organized individual who is very detail oriented and can develop plans necessary for teams to meet specific goals
• An aggressive problem solver who can provide creative solutions to complex situations and obtain buy-in from those affected
• An independent worker who can take the initiative to define and prioritize specific goals and objectives, and to do the same for others
• A team player that works hard, admits their strengths and weaknesses, and has the flexibility to improve by learning new things
• Inspirational and results-oriented leader, capable of earning the trust and respect of high performing engineering teams
• High integrity. Great judgement. Persistent. Winning Attitude.

Here's what you'll be doing:

• Leadership: We need someone who can help us grow. That means hiring the right people, helping people grow both technically and personally, helping teams improve the way they work, creating a stronger and stronger sense of ownership at the individual and team level, mentoring more junior leaders and identifying and developing new leaders. We need you to have proven leadership ability and experience leading and managing multiple cross-functional teams and both individual contributors and first-line managers.
• Technical: You'll have a passion for technology, experience developing systems at scale, on multiple tech stacks and love launching as much as you love delivering results. You also have experience driving the adoption of technical best practices and leading by example.
• Communication: As a leader you need to provide consistent and steady feedback to your team - both positive and constructively critical. You are transparent with your team, and work to keep stakeholders informed of progress and issues.
• Agile Environment: You have experience with Agile environments of all flavours, understand practices associated with different methodologies and when to use them. Understanding the spirit of Agile, you'll work with teams and stakeholders to find ways to solve problems, experiment, learn and iterate on solutions without getting stuck on specific practices.
• Community: While you will have direct ownership and accountability over your product area, you'll be expected to have an impact on Engineering and IX as a whole. Take a moment to share your experiences at a community Agora, contribute towards improving our best practices, or mentor an engineer from another team. We strongly believe in supporting each other to make for a better Index Exchange.

Here's What You Need:

• Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent
• 10+ years of experience in large scale commercial software development environments
• 5+ years of significant technology leadership experience with high volume low latency distributed platforms (experience with globally-distributed industry-scale platforms preferred), and large scale (preferably industry scale) performance and latency optimized pipelines and platforms
• Expert in software development lifecycle and performance profiling and optimization, and how to drive the technology roadmap concurrent with the feature roadmap
• Demonstrated history as an advocate and coach for robust architectural patterns and frameworks, test driven development, and frequent delivery
• Expert in large-scale system profiling, concurrency, and memory management, and designing and building distributed systems
• Expert in establishing pragmatic performance metrics, observability, and targets for large-scale systems (industry scale platform experience preferred)
• Demonstrated ability developing, advancing, and evolving a robust technology roadmap
• Demonstrated history of developing architectural designs and standards, platforms, and frameworks that are effectively leveraged by many development teams
• Expert in large scale distributed stores and streaming pipelines (AeroSpike. Kafka, Flink, Spark, Hadoop, Parquet, Elasticsearch, Vertica, etc) in large-scale high-throughput environments
• Expert at profiling and optimizing high-volume transaction flows using advanced analytics and machine learning
• Expert in leveraging continuous integration and robust build/test automation, with a preference for cross-platform stacks and containerization (Git, Sonar, Kubernetes, etc.)
• Demonstrated ability to provide leadership to globally distributed high performance teams, driving greenfield development in fast moving industries
• Demonstrated ability to recruit, develop, and grow high performing technical talent at all levels

Why You'll Love Working Here:

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans for you and your dependents
• Paid time off, health days, and personal obligation days plus flexible work schedules
• Competitive retirement matching plans
• Equity packages
• Generous parental leave available to birthing, non-birthing, and adoptive parents
• Annual well-being allowance plus fitness discounts and group wellness activities
• Commuter benefits and discounts, where available
• Employee assistance program
• Mental health first aid program that provides an in-the-moment point of contact and reassurance
• One day of volunteer time off per year and a donation-matching program
• Bi-weekly town halls and regular community-led team events
• Multiple resources and programming to support continuous learning
• A workplace that supports a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment - learn more here

Equal employment opportunity

At Index Exchange, we believe that successful products are built by teams just as diverse as the audience who uses them. As such, we are committed to equal employment opportunities. We celebrate diversity of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. Additionally, we realize that diversity is deeper than any status or classification-diversity is the human experience. For those who show grit, passion, and humility-Index will welcome you.

Accessibility for applicants with disabilities

Index Exchange welcomes and encourages individuals with disabilities to apply to work with us.

If you require an accommodation, please share the details of your request and any information how we can assist you with the hiring recruiter when they contact you. Index Exchange will make reasonable efforts to ensure accommodation requests are met throughout the recruitment process.

Index Everywhere, Index Anywhere

Our corporate headquarters are in Toronto, with major offices in New York, Montreal, Kitchener, London, San Francisco, and many other global cities. As a major global advertising exchange, we are committed to operating as a tightly knit global team and embracing and empowering talent wherever our colleagues may be.

AI Disclaimer: Automated tools including artificial intelligence may be used to assist in screening and assessing applicants for this role. All hiring decisions involve human review.

Vacancy Status: This posting is for an existing vacancy.

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