Staff Software Engineer, Demand Bidder, Ad Serving Platform
San Jose, Californiafull time
Remote
senior
$195k–$408k
H1B: yes
Roku Staff Software Engineer to scale and evolve Roku's high-throughput Demand Bidder ad serving platform. Responsible for ownership of key initiatives including pacing engine, scoring/ML engine, and modular architecture.
Responsibilities
We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer (Staff scope) to help scale and evolve this platform. Demand Bidder is a large, high-throughput system driving our next phase of growth. As we onboard a rapid wave of new businesses, we are actively scaling and advancing our architecture — including state of the art pacing engine, scoring/ML engine, modularizing designed for agentic development. Our reliability bar keeps climbing alongside our business scale. We need someone who can rapidly master this intricate ecosystem and take immediate ownership of key initiatives.
For California Only — The estimated annual salary for this position is between $195,000 – $408,000 annually. Compensation packages are based on factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, certifications, and specific geographical location. This role is eligible for health insurance, equity awards, life insurance, disability benefits, parental leave, wellness benefits, and paid time off.
How will I use AI at Roku?
At Roku, we don’t just use AI, we work with it. AI agents and smart tools help power drafts, analysis, and repetitive workflows, while our people bring direction, judgment, and accountability. We’re looking for curious, adaptable builders who can show how they’ve used AI or automation to move faster, raise the bar, and scale their impact.
We value your AI skills if you have built fluency across the agentic engineering toolchain — coding harnesses like Claude Code or Cursor, MCP servers, custom skills, or agent frameworks. And you can describe projects where you shipped real work with these tools. You know how to drive an agent, verify its output, and ramp on an unfamiliar codebase with an agent helping you.
Design, build, and operate core components of a large-scale, real-time distributed decisioning system with strict latency requirements
Take end-to-end ownership of specific subsystems: architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, on-call, and long-term evolution
Build a working mental model of a highly distributed, complex production system, and make high-leverage contributions
Identify opportunities to continuously evolve the system and tooling
Partner with engineers and applied scientists working at the intersection of distributed systems and statistical/ML-driven decision-making
Diagnose and resolve subtle, often timing- or statistics-related issues in a highly concurrent, multi-region distributed system
Mentor other engineers and raise the bar on engineering rigor, testing discipline, and operational excellence across the team
Qualification
Preferred
Experience with AI or automation to move faster and scale impact
Fluency across agentic engineering toolchain such as Claude Code or Cursor, MCP servers, custom skills, or agent frameworks
