Job Description

Index is a global advertising technology company helping media owners monetize their digital content through advertising so that consumers can continue enjoying free and open access to content online.We shaped the earliest forms of ad tech, and we're looking for the technical expertise to help shape its future. Our customers have unique problems that can be solved at scale, and that's where the technical skills of our team make a real difference. Our exchange handles more than 220 billion requests every day (which is even more than the New York Stock Exchange), and every member of our engineering team has an enormous amount of autonomy in building code that supports that level of scale. Through the transparency of our technology, dedication to innovation, and long-standing customer relationships, we lead through change.We have more than 500 Indexers around the globe dedicated to building a safe and transparent marketplace that provides a trusted experience for consumers.What's it like to work at Index?Index is an exciting and fast-paced place to work. We're built on our values of change, support, learning and teaching, trust, and intention. We pride ourselves on our independence and openness, not only in our technology, but in our teams, too. Our diverse and inclusive culture celebrates how we can leverage our unique differences to help drive Index forward.Our culture of success is truly supportive and collaborative. In working together across our teams, we're continually investing in the people and technology to solve the industry's most complex problems. As we extend the promise of ad tech to every channel, we're looking for talented engineers to help advance Index, and the industry, forward.Are you ready to join the programmatic evolution?Index Exchange funds the open web. Content and journalism across the internet are funded through advertising, and we are the engine that helps to make that happen transparently, safely and efficiently. Handling hundreds of billions of auctions per day within milliseconds requires an intense understanding of the exchange and the ecosystem that we live in.Our business is growing significantly every year and is poised to grow even faster. Our people and our platforms are the foundation and enabler of that growth. We are significantly expanding our technology teams and are looking for technologists with a passion for high performance software development, and a drive to deliver software products and platforms that enable and empower industries at a global scale.We're looking for a Principal Engineer (Performance) who can bring their depth and breadth of experience in performance optimizing large-scale distributed systems to define our Index-wide technology strategy for performance profiling, tooling, and optimization our global exchange platform, and to drive pragmatic execution and iterative improvement of same. This position will be reporting to the VP, Platform Engineering.Index's scale spans the globe, our transactions happen 24x7, and every second that passes millions of requests are evaluated across our exchange. In order to achieve our mission, performance and efficiency are absolutely key, as every millisecond quite literally counts in our business.What We're Looking For:A pragmatic and strategic technology leader:

• 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 performance leadership:

• Develop technology strategy, clearly articulate and drive delivery as an initial hire of a new area of the business

• 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 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 Need:

• Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent

• 8+ years of experience in large scale commercial software development environments (ad tech preferred)

• 4+ 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

Equal employment opportunityAt 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 disabilitiesIndex Exchange is committed to working with and providing access and reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. Please let us know if you'd like to request a reasonable accommodation.

Index Exchange