Tech Lead, Ad Exchange

About the role

This role defines the technical leadership for GumGum's high-performance advertising marketplace. You will own the complete lifecycle of our Ad Exchange, transforming complex business needs into resilient, scalable web services. The position operates within The Mindset Company™, balancing rapid feature delivery with rigorous architectural standards. You will mentor engineers, define technical direction, and ensure our systems handle significant scale with reliability. This is a full-time position located in Santa Monica, California, with flexibility for remote work and occasional in-office collaboration.

About The Opportunity

You will be responsible for the end-to-end technical ownership of our Ad Exchange platform. This involves guiding solutions from initial concept through to production deployment and optimization. Your daily work will involve making critical architectural decisions, leading a talented engineering team, and ensuring our services meet demanding performance and reliability targets. You will operate within a modern, high-volume Java environment, applying creativity and technology to solve complex advertising challenges.

The successful candidate will partner closely with product owners and stakeholders to understand ambitious requirements and translate them into actionable technical strategies. You will establish the technical guardrails that ensure our codebase remains robust, maintainable, and scalable. Your influence will extend across the entire engineering process, from high-level system design to detailed code reviews, fostering a culture of engineering excellence.

Key Facts

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Location: USA

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Engagement: Full-time, hybrid with the option for remote work and occasional in-person days.

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Compensation: Base salary of $140,000; On-target total compensation of $180,000; Equity; Comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, and vision.

Core Responsibilities

You will architect and deliver critical web services that power our marketplace, managing the flow from initial intake to final deployment. A primary focus will be designing systems that are both scalable and maintainable, capable of operating reliably under intense load. You will define and enforce technical standards, providing clear guidance to ensure high-quality, robust implementations.

Translating intricate business requirements into clear, technical specifications will be a core function. You will break down large, complex initiatives into manageable pieces, creating detailed implementation plans and precise effort estimates. Your leadership will be essential in our agile processes, where you will run effective scrums, sprint planning sessions, and retrospectives to drive predictable and successful delivery.

Mentoring engineers is a central part of this role. You will provide thoughtful feedback, delegate meaningful work, and actively foster an environment where the team can take ownership and perform at a high level. As the primary technical leader, you will act as the key interface for cross-functional partners, ensuring alignment on timelines, dependencies, and priorities. You will champion best practices, ensuring our systems are resilient enough to handle our demanding traffic volumes.

Essential Qualifications

You must possess extensive experience leading the development of Java Spring services in high-traffic, production web environments. Your background must include hands-on work with a diverse set of production-grade data technologies, including MySQL, ScyllaDb, Kafka, Aerospike, and Memcached.

You have a proven ability to analyze complex business demands and convert them into clear technical requirements that drive impactful results. Owning the full system lifecycle is a core part of your approach, from initial architectural exploration to ongoing performance tuning and optimization. You conduct rigorous code reviews, instilling and maintaining the highest standards for scalable and efficient solutions. You are highly skilled at estimating effort, breaking down large projects into actionable tasks, and managing the associated agile ceremonies.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience guiding technical interview processes and designing effective evaluation exercises is a valuable asset for this role.

Skills & Tools

Your daily work will rely on a core technology stack including Java, Spring, MySQL, Kafka, Aerospike, ScyllaDb, and Memcached.

Practical Notes

Please confirm all details, including specific application procedures and requirements, on the official company career page before applying.