Lead Senior Software Engineer - Platform Security
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About the role
The Platform Security team builds foundational systems that enable secure, reliable operation of The Trade Desk at scale. We focus on making security resilient, developer‑friendly, and deeply integrated into the platform. Our team builds and operates critical services including: Authentication and authorization for users and services Workload identity (SPIFFE / SPIRE‑based) Secrets and certificate management Security health monitoring and risk mitigation Golden images, just‑in‑time access, and secure shared libraries We partner with teams across the company to deliver tools, libraries, and frameworks that run across Kubernetes, cloud environments (Azure, AWS, Aliyun), and on‑prem infrastructure, supporting a global fleet of 15,000+ machines. As a Lead / Senior Software Engineer on Platform Security, you will serve as a technical leader and end‑to‑end owner for security‑critical systems that operate at massive scale. This role sits at the intersection of software engineering, reliability, and security. You will lead the design and evolution of core security platforms, drive complex initiatives across teams, and raise the bar for how security is built and operated across The Trade Desk. You will manage a small team of Engineers to include leading technical direction, mentorship, and ownership. We are a global team with different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. To complement this team, you will welcome ideas that are different from your own and be well-versed in building from common ground to value, seek out, and foster invisible and visible dimensions of diversity.
Responsibilities
- Lead the design, implementation, and long‑term evolution of large‑scale security services, from architecture through production operations
- Own complex, cross‑cutting initiatives spanning authentication, authorization, identity, and secure access
- Make and influence architectural decisions that balance security, reliability, scalability, and developer experience
- Drive high‑quality engineering practices, including testing, observability, operational readiness, and incident response
- Build and maintain shared libraries and frameworks that standardize authentication, authorization, and security best practices across the company
- Partner closely with engineers, SREs, and stakeholders across teams to deliver secure‑by‑default platforms
- Mentor and guide other engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical leadership
- Participate in on‑call rotations and lead incident response for security‑critical systems
- Help shape future‑looking initiatives, including AI‑driven systems that reason about security posture, model architecture, and surface risk automatically
- This role requires comfort operating in ambiguity and driving outcomes that impact the broader platform.
Requirements
- Our culture is much deeper than just having fun together (though, we do that well too...). We take pride in our engineers being trust-builder
Benefits
Additional Information
The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world's leading independent platform for digital advertising, with nearly 4,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet - from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more. Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world's brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly. The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges - from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you're driven to solve meaningful challenges, we'd love to meet you. What we do Our Software Engineers are end-to-end owners who will participate in all aspects of designing, building, and delivering data-focused products for our stakeholders. At The Trade Desk we believe that each opportunity to engage with all internal and external stakeholders, is unique. This means y ou will have the opportunity, based on your interests and background, to work on large-scale distributed systems coordinating thousands of servers in cloud and physical data centers around the world, petabyte-scale data challenges, machine learning, advanced visualizations, and interactive user interfaces - to name a few. Our system performs all day, every day serving global traffic. It's important we focus on quality at scale in an agile environment that is based on collaboration, ownership, and trust. Our software engineering teams fully own their charter to work on long term roadmaps while enhancing existing features or tools and continuously gaining efficiency.
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Company Intel
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