Staff Backend Engineer

Job Description

Under the FOX banner, we produce and distribute content through some of the world's leading and most valued brands, including FOX News Media, FOX Sports, FOX Entertainment, FOX Television Stations, and Tubi Media Group. We empower a diverse range of creators to imagine and develop culturally significant content, while building an organization that thrives on creative ideas, operational expertise, and strategic thinking.

AdRise is FOX's core ad tech platform, built to unify streaming and linear advertising across Tubi, FOX Sports, FOX News Media, and FOX Entertainment. Before AVOD became an industry standard, AdRise helped power Tubi's growth from the ground up by developing real-time ad delivery and dynamic targeting infrastructure that scaled to serve millions. That same tech foundation is now fueling FOX's cross-portfolio monetization strategy.

We are rebuilding the ad stack for video by optimizing server-side delivery, building ML-driven targeting systems, and enabling content-personalized ad experiences that respond to what viewers actually watch. From real-time decisioning to data collaboration with AWS and Snowflake, we are creating a smarter, more dynamic ad tech ecosystem. The problems are complex, the visibility is high, and the platform is built for impact. If you want to work at the center of streaming monetization on systems that touch billions of impressions and shape the next generation of personalized advertising, this is your platform.

About The Role

The Ads Delivery team at AdRise builds the systems that turn advertiser budgets into effective, well-paced ad outcomes. As a Staff Backend Engineer, you will design and operate distributed backend services that determine when, where, and how ads are delivered across partner applications.

You will work closely with Machine Learning, Data Science, and Ad Serving teams to implement and evolve algorithms for pacing, planning, and optimization, while continuously improving the scalability, reliability, and efficiency of our ad delivery platform. This is a highly impactful role with broad technical ownership and influence across the Ads ecosystem.

A Snapshot Of Your Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and evolve large-scale, high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems that power ad delivery and pacing, primarily using Scala
• Set technical direction for critical Ad Delivery services, balancing long-term scalability with immediate business needs
• Lead API and service development with a strong focus on correctness, observability, and operational excellence
• Drive cross-functional initiatives with ML, Data Science, and Ad Serving teams to improve pacing, planning, and optimization systems
• Identify architectural bottlenecks and lead efforts to simplify, modernize, and scale systems as demand grows
• Raise engineering standards through design reviews, code reviews, and mentorship of senior and mid-level engineers
• Prototype and validate new approaches, bringing successful innovations into production at scale
• Own production health by driving incident prevention, monitoring, and continuous improvement across the Ads Delivery stack

What You Will Need

• Extensive experience designing and building scalable distributed systems using JVM languages (Scala preferred; Java or Kotlin acceptable)
• Deep expertise with relational databases (e.g., Postgres), caching systems (e.g., Redis), and messaging/streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka or Kinesis)
• Strong hands-on experience with Akka technologies, including clustering and distributed coordination in production
• Proven ability to build and operate near real-time, high-performance, fault-tolerant services
• Experience working with big data or streaming frameworks such as Apache Spark or Flink
• Demonstrated technical leadership, including driving architecture decisions and influencing cross-team systems
• Strong ownership mindset with a pragmatic approach to delivering high-quality, scalable solutions

Nice To Have, But Not A Dealbreaker

• Experience operating large-scale distributed systems using Kubernetes, Terraform, and related infrastructure tooling
• Strong hands-on experience with Akka technologies, including clustering and distributed coordination in production
• Experience in ad tech, including ad serving, targeting, delivery, or measurement systems

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with applicable law.