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SpotifySpotifyNew York, NY

Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer building and operating high-scale Java (and Scala) services for Spotify's real-time ad auction, ranking, scoring, and filtering that process millions of decisions per second. Requires 4+ years backend experience, low-latency distributed systems expertise, and strong system design, algorithms, and data-driven iteration skills.

Salary not listed
Remote5+ YOEBackend Engineering

About the role

What You'll Do

  • Architect, develop, and operate Java services that power real-time ad auction and ranking decisions at massive scale.
  • Build and maintain the services that conduct scoring, filtering, and selecting winning ads across slot types, formats, and multiple demand sources.
  • Design and evolve auction mechanics including second-price logic, floor price enforcement, bid shading, and guaranteed delivery prioritization.
  • Be a technical leader and valued contributor in an autonomous, cross-functional agile team.
  • Collaborate with other engineers, product owners, and data scientists to identify and solve challenging problems.

Who You Are

  • 4+ years of working experience as a Backend Engineer.
  • Experience with Java, and ideally Scala.
  • Experience building low-latency, high-throughput systems where milliseconds matter — ad serving, real-time bidding, auction systems, or similar domains are a plus.
  • Written distributed, high-volume services and know how to deploy and keep them running in production.
  • Love working in an environment where you constantly experiment and iterate quickly.
  • Believe data is the most powerful tool for informed decision-making.
  • Deep understanding of system design, data structures, and algorithms.
  • Care about quality and know what it means to ship high quality code.

Skills

JavaScalaSystem DesignData StructuresAlgorithmsDistributed SystemsHigh-Throughput SystemsLow-Latency SystemsAd ServingReal-Time BiddingAuction Systems

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