Tech Lead, Ad Exchange

Santa Monica, California, United States

GumGum is The Mindset Company™ 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.

To be a part of The Mindset Company™ transforming advertising, please visit www.gumgum.com/careers.

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, ScyllaDb, 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: GumGum fosters a flexible work environment, offering GumGummers 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.

What You'll Achieve

  • 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.

Skills You'll Bring

  • 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.
  • Proven track record of shipping production-grade systems utilizing AWS and distributed technologies like Kafka, Aerospike, ScyllaDB, or equivalent heavy-data solutions.
  • Experience architecting or working within ultra-high-volume transactional systems handling greater than 100k transactions/second.
  • Solid foundation in RDBMS, with strong hands-on experience designing and optimizing MySQL or similar relational databases.
  • Strong analytical thinker with a proven ability to debug, optimize, and solve complex logic within highly multi-threaded applications.
  • Demonstrated experience coaching, mentoring, and leveling up engineering peers to foster a high-performing team culture.
  • Exceptional communication skills with a history of seamlessly partnering with Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders across remote teams and time zones.
  • A sharp ability to take vague, complex stakeholder requests and systematically break them down into highly organized, actionable technical tasks.

What We Offer

At GumGum, competitive base pay is a part of a total rewards package which also includes benefits, an emphasis on recognition, development, and wellness. The reasonable estimated base pay range for this role is from $186,000 - $215,000 annually.  The actual amount may be higher or lower. Individual compensation will vary based on factors including, but not limited to, relevant qualifications, work location, and labor market conditions.

The total rewards package offered also includes an employer-matched 401(k) retirement plan, and depending on the role, participation in a bonus, commission, or stock incentive program. Your recruiter can share more specifics during the hiring process. Learn more about our U.S. benefits & perks package at gumgum.com/benefits.

Awards

  • 2025 & 2026 Digiday Media Awards Europe Best Contextual Targeting Offering
  • 2025 AdExchanger Awards AI Innovators, Technology & Service Provider, Finalist
  • 2025 MARKETECH APAC Marketing Technology Awards Silver Winner for Best Contextual Advertising Tech Platform

We're always learning and evolving as a company, and we continue to take thoughtful steps to support our people and strengthen our culture.

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