Engineering Manager, Buying & Optimization

Tatari•Los Angeles, CA

14h•$185,000 - $210,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Tatari is on a mission to revolutionize TV advertising. Founded in 2016 to help transform the antiquated world of TV advertising through the intelligent application of AI and machine learning, Tatari helps some of the world’s fastest growing brands including Chime, Calm, Tecovas, Manscapped, Saatva, and Liquid I.V., reach their customers using linear and streaming TV ads. Our platform combines sophisticated media buying with proprietary analytics to turn TV advertising into an automated, digital-like experience, enabling businesses of any size to advertise on TV. That approach has earned Tatari broad industry recognition, including being named Best CTV AdTech Platform in the 8th annual MarTech Breakthrough Awards, as well as honors from Digiday (Best Connected TV Platform), AdExchanger (Most Innovative TV Advertising Technology), and Business Insider (Hottest AdTech Companies). Tatari has also been recognized as the Best Place to Work by Inc. Magazine. Backed by an executive team of former founders and senior leaders from companies including Shazam, TrueCar, AdapTV, LiveRail, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Yahoo, Tatari continues to scale rapidly as TV advertising enters its next major era. As an Engineering Manager, you will lead a team of experienced engineers building features and operating systems that power automated TV and CTV media buying. Your team will own critical parts of the platform responsible for order execution, traffic delivery, and campaign reliability—solving complex, real-world problems at scale in a fast-moving AdTech environment. You will be accountable for both shipping new features and ensuring the stability, performance, and scalability of existing systems that our clients depend on every day. In this role, success is defined by your ability to guide the planning, technical design, and execution of features that simplify and automate the TV media planning and buying lifecycle. You will partner closely with Product Management to turn user needs into well-scoped technical solutions, while working collaboratively with adjacent engineering, data, and media teams. Through strong people leadership and hands-on technical guidance, you will help your team deliver high-impact capabilities that support billions of dollars in annual media spend.

Requirements

7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including minimum 2 years in an engineering management role, preferably in a startup environment.
Experience in AdTech, with expertise in programmatic and CTV streaming advertising (linear TV experience is a strong plus)
Strong technical background in data modeling, APIs, and relational databases.
Familiarity with Python, AWS, Airflow, and queuing systems.
Data driven decision making: experience defining and using metrics/SLAs to guide priorities and measure impact.
Strong communicator with excellent people skills to interact with various teams inside the company.

Nice To Haves

linear TV experience is a strong plus

Responsibilities

Lead the design, development, and maintenance of core backend systems: data models, queries, and GraphQL APIs that power media buying and campaign execution.
Partner closely with Product Management to translate often complex media buying needs into well-defined technical requirements, execution plans, and milestones.
Ensure the team achieves 99.9%+ uptime for Campaign Execution services, including campaign/order processing, and traffic delivery.
Drive strong execution practices including sprint planning, prioritization, dependency management, and delivery commitments.
Provide hands-on technical leadership through architectural guidance, design reviews, and code quality standards—while remaining close enough to the work to unblock teams.
Continuously identify and pay down technical debt that could compromise reliability, scalability, or developer velocity.
Foster a healthy, inclusive, high‑ownership culture where engineers feel empowered to improve systems, processes, and the customer experience.
Manage and develop engineers through regular 1:1s, coaching, feedback, and career development conversations, fostering accountability and growth.