Staff Backend Engineer, AdTech

At Spotify Advertising R&D, our mission is to build the next generation advertising platform for audio which can scale the freemium experience for hundreds of millions of fans and tens of thousands of advertisers. This scale brings unique challenges as well as tremendous opportunities to define our business.

Spotify is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer to join Spotify’s AdTech Team. We work at the intersection of advertising and messaging technologies to connect millions of brands to billions of fans. You’ll help us define and materialize our vision to improve the ad experience for our advertisers alike and grow our AdTech Team to be a market leader.

We are looking for engineers that share our common curiosity about distributed systems, their scalability, and continued development. You will collaborate closely with our core ads engineers to figure out the best way to build and scale an external facing advertising/marketing API. You will build the backend services that power ad studio (adstudio.spotify.com), scale our Ads API for internal and external usage, guide the design of highly distributed systems, and continuously improve our engineering practices. We’re a truly full-stack team with expertise in mobile, web, and backend, and our culture emphasizes creative problem-solving, fast iteration, and execution.


What You'll Do

 
Collaborate across multiple development teams and business units to identify, define, develop, modify, and implement reusable advertiser-facing services and developer-facing APIs
 
Architect, re-build, and iterate on backend systems with a privacy and security first attitude, and an emphasis on scalability and operability
 
Ensure the responsiveness, reliability, and performance of applications
 
Maintain services once they are live by measuring and monitoring availability, latency, and overall system health.
 
Scale systems sustainably through mechanisms like automation and evolve systems by pushing for changes that improve reliability and velocity.
 
Be seen as a technical leader, valued contributor, and subject matter expert in API knowledge
 
Mentor and coach engineers for org-wide technical growth in an autonomous, cross-functional environment
 
Be a leader of the Spotify-wide backend and API developer communities affecting and driving our architecture across the company
 
Work on what you want during regular hack days and annual hack weeks.


Who You Are

 
You have 6+ years of API experience - building APIs for internal and external customers.
 
You have proven experience with Scala, Java, and/or Python.
 
You have a strong understanding of web-based API technologies (REST, GraphQL, SSO, Token Management, OAS, IAM, etc).
 
You have experience with GCP, gRPC, PubSub, Kafka, and BigQuery.
 
You have experience working in advertising technology at scale.
 
You have experience defining technical requirements and establishing testing, monitoring, and integration plans for distributed endpoint ownership.
 
You have an understanding of SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets
 
You have experience working directly with stakeholders to understand, document, and develop APIs and systems to meet their requirements, driving increased adoption and reducing reliance on custom one-off implementations.
 
You love working in an environment where you can influence the technical direction of teams that seek to consistently deliver and iterate quickly.
 
You have a deep understanding of system design and APIs at scale.


Where You'll Be

 
We are a distributed workforce enabling our band members to find a work mode that is best for them!
 
Where in the world? For this role, it can be within the Americas region in which we have a work location: https://lifeatspotify.com/locations
 
Prefer an office to work from home instead? Not a problem! We have plenty of options for your working preferences. Find more information about our Work From Anywhere options here.



The United States base range for this position is $185,545-$265,064, plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, 13 paid flexible holidays, paid sick leave. This range encompasses multiple levels. Leveling is determined during the interview process.  Placement in a level depends on relevant work history and interview performance. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.