Graduate Software Engineer (2025 Start), San Francisco

Please apply a single time, for only one location in North America for the Software Engineer I position. We will consider you for ALL locations with a single application.

Is this the next step in your career Find out if you are the right candidate by reading through the complete overview below.

The Trade Desk is a global technology company with a mission to create a better, more open internet for everyone through principled, intelligent advertising.

Handling over 1 trillion queries per day, our platform operates at an unprecedented scale. We have also built something even stronger and more valuable : an award-winning culture based on trust, ownership, empathy, and collaboration.

We value the unique experiences and perspectives that each person brings to The Trade Desk, and we are committed to fostering inclusive spaces where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work every day.

Do you have a passion for solving hard problems at scale? Are you eager to join a dynamic, globally-connected team where your contributions will make a meaningful difference in building a better media ecosystem?

Come and see why Fortune magazine consistently ranks The Trade Desk among the best small- to medium-sized workplaces globally.

What we do :

At The Trade Desk, we believe in building the back-end infrastructure of our platform with a focus on quality at scale. This means whether we are building parts of our client-facing applications, internal custom solutions for our own team members, or model pipelines for bidding optimizations, we are making sure that we have infrastructure, development, and tools to do it right and efficiently.

Our system performs all day, every day serving global traffic. We build a distributed system in a highly collaborative environment, utilizing a broad range of technologies.

Our back-end developers work on finding solutions to algorithmic, optimization and scale challenges in everything we do.

What you’ll do :

• Our Engineers are end-to-end owners. You will participate actively in all aspects of designing, building, and delivering products for our clients.
• We have dozens of individuals, mission-focused teams working across a wide spectrum of technological challenges. You will have the opportunity, depending on your interests and aptitude, to work on large-scale distributed systems coordinating thousands of servers in cloud and physical data centers around the world, petabyte-scale data challenges, machine learning, advanced visualizations, and interactive user interfaces to name a few.

Who you are :

Our culture is much deeper than just having fun together (though, we do that well too...). We take pride in our engineers being trust-builders, generous givers, scrappy problem solvers, and gritty pursuers of excellence.

You do not have to meet all the requirements below, but we believe that people who meet most of them will have a higher likelihood of succeeding in this role :

• Student working toward a Bachelor’s / Master’s level degree in a computer-science or computer engineering or relevant engineering related field graduating between December 2024 and Aug 2025.
• You have a sustained track record of making significant, self-directed, and end-to-end contributions to large and impactful software projects.

You think beyond just the task at hand to deeply understand the 'why' behind what you are doing.

You understand engineering fundamentals. At our scale, many off-the-shelf techniques and existing technologies (open source and enterprise) simply don't work.

You are able to work from first principles to evaluate solutions and adapt them to a unique environment.

• You are a broadly skilled engineer, accustomed to developing web services. You have experience building always-on systems, working across a variety of technologies and service layers.
• You have a product-focused mindset. You have the passion and ability to contribute to the process of discovering what will delight our clients and push forward one of the world’s largest and most influential industries toward a vision of openness, transparency, and evidence-based decision-making.
• You work with confidence and without ego. Our engineers have deep knowledge and exercise a high degree of leadership in their daily work.

You have strongly-held, defensible ideas, and advocate for what you believe is right. You are also adept at identifying and evaluating trade-offs, willing to be proven wrong, and quick to walk through fire to support your fellow teammates.

You value, seek out, and foster diversity. We are a global team from many diverse backgrounds, with different experiences and perspectives.

To complement this team, you will welcome ideas that are different from your own and be skilled at finding and building from common ground.

You are a creative thinker, not bound by "the way things have always been done". What you know is less important than how well you learn and innovate.

We don't need engineers who know all the answers; we need engineers who can invent the answers no one has thought of yet, to the questions yet to be asked.

Variety of technical opportunity is one of the best things about working at The Trade Desk as a software engineer which is why we do not expect you to know every technology we use when you start.

What we care about is that you can learn quickly and find solutions to complex problems using the optimum tools for the job.

The Trade Desk does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm recruiters. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired;

such resumes will be deemed the sole property of The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs.

We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.

NY, CO, CA, and WA residents only :

In accordance with NY, CO, CA, and WA law, the range provided is The Trade Desk's reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role.

The actual amount may differ based on non-discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and location.

All employees may be eligible to become The Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock-based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance.

The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as sales-based incentives and commissions. Plus, expected benefits for this role include comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, and vision) with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents, retirement benefits such as a 401k plan and company match, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, well-being benefits, reimbursement for certain tuition expenses, parental leave, sick time of 1 hour per 30 hours worked, vacation time for full-time employees up to 120 hours thru the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year.

Employees can also purchase The Trade Desk stock at a discount through The Trade Desk’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan.

Note : Interns are not eligible for variable incentive awards such as stock-based compensation, retirement plan, vacation, tuition reimbursement or parental leave.

At the Trade Desk, Base Salary is one part of our competitive total compensation and benefits package and is determined using a salary range.

The base salary range for this role is $124,100 $186,100 USD.

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