Senior Java Team Lead

Job Vacancy: Senior Java Team Lead & Strong Programmer (DSP / AdTech)

A Senior Java Backend Team Lead with exceptional hands-on programming skills who will take full technical and people leadership of the backend team for our DSP (Programmatic) platform and related AdTech solutions.

This is a deeply technical, hands-on leadership role. We need a strong senior programmer and effective people manager who will drive the team, own key technologies, and deliver high-impact results — not just a pure architect.

Responsibilities:

• Full technical leadership and people management of the backend development team (task distribution, goal setting, performance tracking, and delivery ownership).
• Hands-on development and daily code reviews of critical DSP platform components.
• Building and optimizing development processes: code reviews, knowledge sharing, onboarding, and continuous team skill growth.
• Technology ownership for the entire backend stack: selecting tools and best practices, managing technical debt, ensuring scalability and performance.
• Leading the development of high-load, low-latency real-time systems for real-time bidding, auction logic, ad serving, targeting, data processing, and other core features.
• Integration with SSPs, Ad Exchanges, DMPs, Ad Servers, and external advertising platforms.
• Active mentoring and development of team members through 1:1s, technical guidance, and helping engineers grow from junior/middle to senior levels.
• Deep performance optimization, latency reduction, refactoring, and technical debt elimination across the team’s deliverables.
• Cross-team coordination with frontend, DevOps, data science, and product teams.
• Defining and enforcing technical standards and development best practices.

Requirements:

• 6−8+ years of strong commercial Java backend development experience.
• Proven team leadership or strong technical leadership experience: successfully managing a team of 4−8+ developers, delivering complex projects, and growing team capabilities.
• Must be a very strong hands-on Java programmer with proven ability to write complex, high-performance, production-ready code.
• Mandatory practical experience in the AdTech domain: DSP, SSP, Ad Exchange, Ad Server, or Programmatic Advertising systems.
• Solid experience designing and developing high-load real-time systems (RTB, OpenRTB, auction engines, etc.).
• Excellent expertise in: Spring Boot, Hibernate, MongoDB, ClickHouse (or similar technologies).
• Strong experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring tools (Prometheus/Grafana, etc.).
• Good understanding of programmatic advertising concepts, real-time data processing, and privacy regulations (GDPR/CCPA).
• Ability to combine deep hands-on coding with team leadership and people management.
• English: Intermediate level (B1/B2) — sufficient for reading technical documentation and participating in technical discussions.
• Russian: Native or fluent level (the main language of team communication and internal correspondence).

Will be a big advantage:

• Direct experience building or significantly redesigning DSP/SSP/Ad Exchange systems.
• Previous role as Backend Team Lead or Tech Lead with a strong coding focus.
• Knowledge of machine learning in advertising (bidding optimization, look-alike modeling, etc.).
• Experience working in fast-paced product companies with high traffic and rapid iteration.
• Strong skills in conflict resolution, team motivation, and process improvement.

Conditions:

• Full-time position.
• Fully remote work.
• Long-term position.
• Direct impact on the team, core technologies, and the success of a sophisticated DSP system.