Staff Software Engineer, Ads

About GameChanger:

We believe in the life-changing impact youth sports have on and off the field because they encourage leadership, teamwork, responsibility, and confidence—important life lessons that have the power to propel our youth toward meaningful futures. We recognize that without coaches, parents, and volunteers, organized youth sports could not exist. By building the first and best place to experience the youth sports moments important to our community, we are helping families elevate the next generation through youth sports.

So if you love sports and their community-building potential, or building cool products is your sport, GameChanger is the team for you. We are a remote-first, dynamic tech company based in New York City, and we are solving some of the biggest challenges in youth sports today.

The Position:

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will help define and drive the technical strategy for our advertising platform as we expand how advertising is delivered across live sports experiences. You will serve as a technical leader for the team, shaping architecture, identifying long-term platform investments, and helping us build advertising systems that are reliable, scalable, and adaptable to new business opportunities.

You will bring advertising technology expertise to help us evolve our current capabilities while preparing for more sophisticated experiences in video and server side advertising. You will work closely with Engineering, Product, Design, Data, and business partners to translate advertising opportunities into thoughtful technical strategies and scalable solutions.

This role extends beyond individual project execution. You'll help identify technical opportunities and risks, establish architectural direction, mentor engineers, and influence technical decisions across teams whose systems intersect with advertising, video, and monetization.

You will report to an Engineering leader in the Ads space.

What You’ll Do:

• Define and drive the technical strategy for our advertising platform, establishing an architecture that can evolve with our product and advertising business.

• Provide technical leadership for current and future advertising capabilities, such as video ads, server-side advertising, connected TV experiences, programmatic advertising, and new ad formats.

• Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to identify technical investments that unlock new advertising capabilities and revenue opportunities.

• Lead architecture and system design for complex, cross-functional initiatives spanning advertising, video, backend services, clients, and data systems.

• Evaluate architectural approaches and third-party advertising technologies, clearly communicating tradeoffs across scalability, reliability, user experience, implementation complexity, and business needs.

• Improve the reliability, observability, scalability, and maintainability of our advertising systems and integrations.

• Establish patterns and abstractions that make it easier and safer for teams to build and experiment with advertising experiences.

• Partner closely with engineers across video, client, platform, data, and monetization teams to ensure advertising capabilities work effectively across our broader technical ecosystem.

• Mentor engineers and raise the technical bar through design reviews, architectural guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.

• Build and maintain technical documentation, architectural plans, and longer-term technical roadmaps.

• Stay current on changes in the advertising technology ecosystem and help the organization understand which emerging technologies and approaches are relevant to our products.

• Participate in an occasional on-call rotation with the team.

Who You Are

• You are a technical leader who can move between long-term architecture and hands-on implementation.

• You are comfortable taking ownership of an ambiguous technical space, identifying the most important problems to solve, and creating a path forward without needing detailed direction.

• You think beyond individual features and consider how technical decisions affect the platform years into the future.

• You are skilled at breaking down complex systems and communicating technical tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical partners.

• You enjoy mentoring other engineers and helping teams make better architectural and engineering decisions.

• You stay curious about emerging technologies and industry trends and apply sound engineering judgment when deciding where they can create meaningful value.

Experience

• 8+ years of professional software development experience, with demonstrated technical leadership on complex or large-scale systems.

• Experience designing and evolving distributed, high-scale production systems.

• Professional experience architecting and delivering advertising technology systems or integrations, with a strong foundation in backend engineering and experience supporting video advertising.

• Experience with one or more areas of the modern advertising ecosystem, such as ad serving, video ad delivery, SSAI/CSAI, VAST, programmatic advertising or header bidding.

• Experience leading architecture and technical strategy across projects involving multiple engineers or teams.

• Strong understanding of API design, distributed systems, reliability, observability, and system performance.

• Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical decisions beyond your immediate projects and teams.

• Experience with live or streaming video systems is strongly preferred.

• Experience with connected TV advertising or server-side ad insertion is preferred.

• Experience with Google Ad Manager or similar ad-serving platforms is preferred.

• Experience with TypeScript, Node.js, AWS, Redis, and PostgreSQL is preferred.

Perks:

• Work remotely throughout the US* or from our well-furnished, modern office in Manhattan, NY.

• Unlimited vacation policy.

• Paid volunteer opportunities.

• Technology stipend - $4,000 every 2 years after your start to make sure you have the latest and greatest technology.

• WFH stipend - $500 annually to make your WFH situation comfortable.

• Monthly physical, mental, wellness & learning stipend offered through Holisticly.

• Monthly lifestyle stipend offered through Fringe.

• Full health benefits - medical, dental, vision, prescription, FSA, HRA, HSA, and coverage for family/dependents.

• Retirement savings - Traditional and Roth 401K plans are offered through Vanguard, with an immediate company match.

• Life insurance - basic life, supplemental life, and dependent life.

• Disability leave - short-term disability and long-term disability.

• Company paid parental leave - up to 20 weeks for birthing parents and up to 12 weeks for non-birthing parents.

• Family building benefits offered through Progyny.

• DICK'S Sporting Goods and their family of brands teammate discount.

The target salary range for this position is between $165,000 and $185,000. This is part of a total compensation package that includes incentive, equity, and benefits for eligible roles. Individual pay may vary from the target range and is determined by several factors including experience, internal pay equity, and other relevant business considerations. We constantly review all teammate pay to ensure a great compensation package that is fair and equal across the board.

* DICK'S Sporting Goods has company-wide practices to monitor and protect the company from significant compliance and monetary implications as it pertains to employer state tax liabilities. Due to said guidelines put in place, we are unable to hire in AK, DE, HI, IA, LA, MS, MT, OK, and SC.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Our Interview Process & AI

We recognize that AI has become a common part of everyday life and professional work, and its use continues to evolve rapidly. Our perspective on AI in the hiring process will evolve as well. At this time, we ask that candidates please refrain from using AI tools during interviews and assessments, as we want to see your authentic self. We will clearly indicate if and when AI use is acceptable in the process. If you have any questions or need accommodations, we're here to help. Thanks for helping us keep the process fair and secure for everyone!

IMPORTANT NOTICE: All official recruitment communications from GameChanger will come from an email address ending in @gc.com or [email protected]. If you receive communication from any other domain, please be cautious, as it is likely fraudulent.