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Lead Software Engineer

Cogent IBS, IncEnglewood, CO🇺🇸United StatesPosted Sep 17, 2026

Quick Overview

Seniority
Mid Senior
Work mode
On Site
Location
Englewood, CO, United States
Posted
6 days ago
RustAWSSnowflakeC++JavaKubernetes

Job Description

Lead Software Engineer- Englewood, CO or Sunnyvale, CA- ONSITE 4X
Prioritize Denver/Englewood
Full Time
Job Summary
Seeking a Lead Software Engineer (ENG 5) to serve as a principal-level individual contributor driving the technical direction of our Buyer Cloud Ad Serving platform.
The Ad Serving system is the high-throughput backbone of the demand-side platform (DSP). It processes billions of ad auctions daily, executes complex real-time decisioning strategies, and delivers responses in single-digit milliseconds.
In this role, you will lead the architecture of mission-critical distributed systems, tackle complex performance and scale challenges, and influence engineering practices across multiple teams all without direct people management responsibilities
Job Description
Responsibilities: 
  • Architectural Leadership: Lead the end-to-end architecture, design, and execution of highly scalable, low-latency backend services for the Buyer Cloud platform. 
  • Strategy: Drive multi-team initiatives centered on platform reliability, system decomposition, scalability, and operational excellence. 
  • System Optimization: Identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks in distributed workflows operating under strict latency budgets. 
  • Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner with Product, Infrastructure, SRE, and Data Engineering to define technical roadmaps and align technical strategy with business goals. 
  • Engineering Standards: Establish best practices for design reviews, code quality, testing, observability, and incident root-cause analysis (RCA). 
  • Mentorship & Talent Growth: Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through design coaching, code reviews, and architectural guidance. 
  • Consistent exercise of independent judgment and discretion in matters of significance.
  • Regular, consistent and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends, variable schedule(s) as necessary.
  • Other duties and responsibilities as assigned
The Ideal Skillset:
  • Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience). 
  • Experience: 13+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 2+ years in a Staff or Lead Engineer role. 
  • Core Languages: Expert-level proficiency in compiled/high-performance languages (C++, Go, Java, or Rust). 
  • Distributed Systems: Proven track record of designing, operating, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed backend systems in production. 
  • Systems Engineering: Deep understanding of concurrency, multithreading, memory management, networking protocols, and performance profiling on Linux. 
  • Cloud & Infrastructure: Experience building containerized, cloud-native services (AWS, Kubernetes, ECS, or equivalent) with robust observability (metrics, tracing, logging). 
Bonus Points:
  • Experience with ultra-low-latency, real-time decisioning systems (e.g., AdTech/DSPs, financial trading, real-time analytics, high-frequency auction systems). 
  • Experience handling petabyte-scale datasets or systems processing millions of requests per second (RPS). 
  • Familiarity with distributed datastores and storage platforms (e.g., Aerospike, Snowflake, event streaming architectures). 
  • Demonstrated experience modernizing legacy architectures and driving cloud-native adoption. 
Employees at all levels are expected to:
  • Understand our Operating Principles; make them the guidelines for how you do your job.
  • Own the customer experience think and act in ways that put our customers first, give them seamless digital options at every touchpoint, and make them promoters of our products and services.
  • Know your stuff be enthusiastic learners, users and advocates of our game-changing technology, products and services, especially our digital tools and experiences.
  • Win as a team make big things happen by working together and being open to new ideas.
  • Be an active part of the Net Promoter System a way of working that brings more employee and customer feedback into the company by joining huddles, making call backs and helping us elevate opportunities to do better for our customers.
  • Drive results and growth.
  • Support a culture of inclusion in how you work and lead.
  • Do what's right for each other, our customers, investors and our communities.

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