Ad Tech Engineering Team Lead

About Very

(Remote – Canada)

Very is a fully distributed technology firm led by expert problem-solvers who create efficient, scalable solutions that move commercial, industrial, and consumer products from pilot to production in record time.

We believe that real innovation happens in the grind — working shoulder to shoulder with clients who are building the future. Our team thrives on that energy. When we’re not helping clients deliver business-critical outcomes, we’re refining our craft and celebrating what it means to do hard things well.

We’ve built a collaborative, tight-knit culture that thrives in both remote and in-person settings. We’ve won numerous workplace awards over the years, including Great Place to Work certification and recognition from Parity.org as a Best Company for Women to Advance.

Our clients include well-known brands like Vizio, Peloton, Clear, iHeart Radio, and Fellowes — all determined to leverage connected devices and AI to drive meaningful impact. Our job is simple: help them win.

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As an AdTech Engineering Team Lead you'll lead a team of 3 to 5 engineers embedded in a client's engineering organization through Very's staff augmentation model, working on programmatic advertising infrastructure. You and your team will work across the ad serving pipeline, from bid request handling through creative delivery, in high-throughput, low-latency environments on AWS.

This is a full-time, long-term role that combines people leadership with hands-on technical work. You'll set direction for your team, own their delivery and growth, and stay close enough to the code to review designs, unblock engineers and step in during incidents. You'll work in the client's codebase, tools and processes, partner day to day with their engineering and product leaders, and stay part of the Very team. At Very, a manager is accountable for both what the team ships and how the team works.

This is not an easy role. You'll work under real deadlines with a client who expects you and your team to be available, proactive and delivering from day one. If you like doing hard things well, you'll fit right in.

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What You’ll Be Working On

As the leader of an embedded team within the client's engineering organization, you'll:

• Lead, mentor and grow a team of 3 to 5 AdTech engineers.
• Plan and prioritize the team's work with client engineering and product leaders, and own delivery against sprint and roadmap commitments.
• Guide the design and build of real-time bidding (RTB) infrastructure, including the bid request/response lifecycle, auction logic and win notification handling.
• Oversee integrations with ad server platforms, including tag management, creative rendering and VAST compliance.
• Set the architecture for AWS systems that scale elastically under variable, auction-driven traffic.
• Own the data pipelines for bid stream processing, event logging, reporting, attribution and frequency capping.
• Optimize for low latency, high throughput and cost-efficient architecture at volume.
• Own the team's production support and incident response, and maintain system health, performance and reliability.
• Collaborate across engineering, product and business stakeholders to deliver high-quality outcomes.
• Identify and proactively address potential technical or operational risks before they affect revenue or customers.

You and your team will operate in an environment that includes:

• Ad Tech: OpenRTB, IAB standards (ads.txt, sellers.json, VAST/VPAID), Spring Serve, header bidding (Prebid)
• Cloud: AWS (EC2, ECS/EKS, auto-scaling, CloudFront, S3, Athena/Redshift)
• Streaming: Managed Kafka (MSK) or Kinesis
• Databases & Caching: DynamoDB, Redis
• Infrastructure as Code: AWS CDK, Terraform
• DevOps: Docker, GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines
• Frontend: React, TypeScript
• Observability: Logging, monitoring, alerting and production diagnostics

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Outcomes

• Build a Strong Team: Hire, develop and retain engineers who deliver with minimal oversight and hold a high bar for quality.
• Keep Auctions Fast and Reliable: Make sure bid handling meets strict latency targets and stays available under peak traffic.
• Scale With Confidence: Build infrastructure that scales elastically with auction-driven traffic while keeping cloud costs under control.
• Ensure Accurate Data: Deliver reliable impression, event and reporting pipelines the business can trust.
• Deliver High-Quality Features: Make sure your team ships secure, reliable code that meets requirements and delivers measurable business value.
• Be a Trusted Partner: Integrate your team fully with the client's organization and become the leader they rely on.

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Responsibilities

• Manage a team of 3 to 5 engineers
• Review designs and code, set engineering standards, and make sure RTB and ad serving components comply with OpenRTB and IAB standards.
• Lead integrations with ad server platforms such as Spring Serve.
• Guide the design and upkeep of scalable AWS infrastructure built with AWS CDK and/or Terraform.
• Oversee the bid stream and event processing pipelines the team runs on Kafka or Kinesis.
• Own the team's deployment practices, CI/CD pipelines, logging, monitoring and alerting.
• Run the team's rituals (standups, sprint planning, retrospectives) within the client's engineering processes and tools.
• Lead the team's production support and incident response, including diagnosing and resolving production issues.
• Report on team health, delivery and risks to client stakeholders and Very leadership, and drive documentation and knowledge sharing.

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Minimum Qualifications

General Experience

• BS or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field
• 8+ years of professional software development experience
• 2+ years directly managing engineers
• Hands-on experience building programmatic advertising systems (ad networks, SSPs, DSPs, ad exchanges, ad-tech startups or publisher-side engineering)
• Experience working in high-throughput, low-latency production environments
• Experience designing and operating systems on AWS at scale
• Hands-on experience building production front-end applications with React and TypeScript
• Full software development lifecycle experience, including requirements, design, implementation, testing, deployment and operations
   

Great to have

• Spring Serve ad server integration experience (a strong differentiator)
• Header bidding experience (Prebid.js or server-side)
• SSP or DSP platform internals
• CTV/OTT ad delivery experience
• Privacy and consent frameworks (TCF, GPP, CCPA signal handling)
• Infrastructure as code with AWS CDK or Terraform
• Experience leading teams embedded with clients or distributed across locations (staff augmentation or consulting)

Technical Proficiency

• Strong knowledge of the OpenRTB specification and IAB technical standards (ads.txt, sellers.json, VAST/VPAID)
• Experience with the real-time bidding lifecycle: bid requests/responses, auction mechanics and win notifications
• Experience integrating with or building against ad server platforms
• Strong proficiency with React and TypeScript, including reviewing front-end code and guiding front-end architecture
• AWS scaling patterns for ad-tech workloads, including:
  • EC2/ECS/EKS auto-scaling
  • CloudFront for creative delivery
  • DynamoDB or Redis for low-latency lookups
  • S3 with Athena or Redshift for impression and event logging
• Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code (AWS CDK or Terraform)
• Experience building data pipelines for reporting, attribution and frequency capping
• Experience debugging distributed production systems at scale

Requirements

• Must be based in Canada.
• Professional English fluency.
• Ability to work with significant overlap with US business hours.

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Skills

• Client Obsessed: Keeps the client’s success front and center. Measures technical choices by their business impact.
• Clear Communicator: Gives direct, timely feedback to their team and collaborates effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Quality-Driven: Holds themselves and their team to high standards for code quality and reliability.
• Ownership Mindset: Takes responsibility for the team's results and for solutions that work in real-world conditions.
• Problem Solver: Thrives in complexity and finds solutions even when requirements are evolving.

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Compensation & Benefits

Base Compensation:  $135,900 CAD, commensurate with experience.
Variable Compensation:  Up to 10% annual performance bonus

**Note: To qualify for this role, you must reside in Canada and be legally authorized to work in Canada. We do not sponsor work visas. 

Perks & Benefits:

• Group RRSP match (Employer contributes 4% of your annual income)
• $150 USD/mo cell/internet stipend
• $600 USD/yr home office equipment stipend
• Extended healthcare, dental, and vision insurance
• Professional development stipend
• Loaned MacBook Pro
• Annual team retreat

 

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Why Work for Very

We do not promise an easy ride — we promise meaningful work.

We work hard because our clients’ success depends on it, and we take pride in delivering when others can’t. We collaborate closely, move fast, and stay grounded in results. We take joy in the process — in the problem-solving, the iteration, and the shared wins that come from doing the hard things well.

If you’re looking for a place where every project matters, where the standards are high, and where you’ll grow by pushing yourself and others — welcome to Very.

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Interviewing for a new company is a serious time commitment for all parties involved. Please take the time to read this and thoughtfully consider if we would be a good fit for one another.  No agencies. Seriously. #LI-Remote

**Note: To qualify for this role, you must reside in Canada