Senior Software Engineer - Programmatic Video, Advertising

Senior Software Engineer - Programmatic Video, Advertising

New York, NY

The mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. That means independent journalism is at the heart of all we do as a company. It's why we have a world-renowned newsroom that sends journalists to report on the ground from nearly 160 countries. It's why we focus deeply on how our readers will experience our journalism, from print to audio to a world-class digital and app destination. And it's why our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it's worth paying for.

About the Role

The Digital Advertising Mission at The New York Times is looking for a senior software engineer to lead the technical evolution of our programmatic video advertising capabilities. You will collaborate across NYT product teams to build performant, video-first ad experiences. This is a hybrid role, based at our New York City headquarters, reporting to the Ad Experience Engineering Manager. At The New York Times, our product teams create engaging experiences for over 150 million digital readers from around the globe. The Digital Advertising Mission develops display and video ad products that differentiates us in the market, perform for our readers, and sell at scale.

Responsibilities:

As a senior individual contributor specializing in video and programmatic technology, you will:

• Architect Video Ad Products: Create seamless outstream (in-read, in-page) and instream video experiences across NYT products.
• Identity and Privacy: Design and implement solutions for identity resolution within the programmatic stack, ensuring high auction match rates auctions while maintaining strict privacy standards.
• Standards and Compliance: Implement and promote industry standards for video delivery, such as VAST or VPAID, ensuring compatibility across our multi-platform environment.
• Performance Monitoring: Oversee end-to-end performance of video ads, focusing on Core Web Vitals and reducing the "time to first frame" for outstream units.
• Mentorship and Quality: Advocate for codebase quality, mentor engineers on the nuances of programmatic auctions, and foster an environment of excellence.
• Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.
• This role reports to the Senior Engineering Manager, Ad Experience.

Basic Qualifications:

• Experience: You have 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a heavy focus on AdTech.
• Programmatic Expertise: You understand programmatic advertising including bidder configuration, universal identity providers (e.g., UID2, LiveRamp), and optimizing auctions in web and mobile environments.
• Video Specialization: You understand outstream and programmatic video workflows. You are comfortable working with video players and ad-signaling protocols.
• Technical Experience: You are proficient in TypeScript/JavaScript, front-end library CI/CD tooling, and version control.
• Yield and Performance Driven: You understand how technical decisions, such as identity matching and auction depth, impact programmatic yield and user latency.
• AI Experience: Hands-on experience with agentic or AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude Code or Cursor) including the ability to effectively direct, iterate on, and verify AI-generated output.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hybrid or web viewed content within Apps.

This role may require limited on-call hours. An on-call schedule will be determined when you join, taking into account team size and other variables.