Hybrid Director, Engineering (Performance) bei Index exchange

At Index Exchange, we’re reinventing how digital advertising works—at scale. As a global advertising supply-side platform, we empower the world’s leading media owners and marketers to thrive in a programmatic, privacy-first ecosystem. 

We’re a proud industry pioneer with over 20 years of experience accelerating the ad technology evolution. Our proprietary tech is trusted by some of the world’s largest brands and media owners and plays a crucial role in keeping the internet open, accessible, and largely free. 

We process more than 550 billion real-time auctions every day (in comparison, Google processes 8.5 billion searches per day) with ultra-low latency. Our platform is vertically integrated from servers to networks and runs primarily on our own metal and cloud infrastructure. This end-to-end infrastructure is designed to provide both stability and agility, enabling us to adapt quickly as the market evolves. 

At the core of it all is our engineering-first culture. Our engineers tackle internet-scale problems across tight-knit, global teams. From moving petabytes of data and optimizing with AI to making real-time infrastructure decisions, Indexers have the agency and influence to shape the future of advertising. We move fast, build thoughtfully, and stay grounded in our core values. 

About The Role: 

We’re looking for a Director, Engineering (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. 

What We’re Looking For: 

A pragmatic and strategic technology leader: 

• Define the roadmap for performance profiling, tooling, optimization, and latency reduction across the entire exchange platform. 

• 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 architectural leadership: 

• Develop technology strategy, clearly articulate and drive delivery as a core member of a technology architecture leadership team 

• 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 manage, 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: