Head of Programmatic

About the role

We're looking for the person who owns Arpeely's relationship with the programmatic ecosystem. You'll open new supply, negotiate the terms we trade under, run strategic technical partnerships with the biggest exchanges, decide which vendors are worth integrating with, and set the risk and compliance posture that lets our growth teams move fast without blowing up.

This is a hybrid seat: half commercial (deals, partnerships, vendor strategy), half technical leadership (integrations, compliance systems, ad quality, supply quality). You'll report to the CTO and you'll build out the programmatic team.

If you've spent years as a senior programmatic operator at a DSP, exchange, or large advertiser, and you want a seat where the levers are real and the decisions stick, this is it.

What You’ll Do

Your main KPI is to grow Arpeely's programmatic spend by 10x, into the hundreds of millions. Concretely, that means:

• Scale Arpeely's foothold in the ecosystem. Open new exchanges and SSPs, negotiate commercial terms and rebates with supply partners. Work with existing exchanges like Google and AppLovin on strategic technical joint ventures that go beyond "we're a buyer on your platform."
• Find opportunities in our bidding. Work with Engineering and Data Science to leverage signals in the RTB stream. Turn auction-level observations into action: supply paths worth consolidating, deal opportunities that only the bid data surfaces, margin and fee dynamics worth pushing on, and inventory pockets where we should bid more or less aggressively. Your judgment plus the data team's signal is the loop that drives spend up and effective CPMs down.
• Own risk, compliance, and the guardrails that let the business move fast. Be the focal point of compliance knowledge inside Arpeely. Partner with Legal on matters like GDPR, CMPs, and Arpeely's broader legal exposure. Work with partner compliance teams to align. Create and manage risk models and workflows that let growth and trading teams take bigger swings safely.
• Research new fields in the AdTech stack. Scout adjacent categories worth playing in: data enrichment, identity solutions, measurement and attribution, contextual signals, clean rooms, curation, retail media, fraud and verification, AI signal providers.
• Build and lead the programmatic team. Manage direct team members and cross-functional efforts. Propose and hire the next roles, coach the team, raise the bar.
• Be the senior face of Arpeely in the programmatic ecosystem: exchange QBRs, partner escalations, conferences, and the calls that need a leader in the seat.

Requirements:

• 8+ years in programmatic, with meaningful time at a DSP, exchange, SSP, large advertiser, or trading desk, including a leadership or senior IC seat.
• Commercial fluency and a deal-making track record. You've negotiated terms with exchanges or supply partners, you frame decisions in revenue, margin, and risk, and you count. A strong existing network in the programmatic ecosystem is a plus.
• Deep AdTech expertise with real technical credibility. You can hold your own with engineers and debug an integration at the protocol level. OpenRTB, supply-path optimization, identity, attribution, viewability, fraud, brand safety, and the differences between web and in-app.
• Sharp judgment on vendors, risk, and compliance. You can tell a real vendor from a pitch deck, and you understand the regulatory and partner-policy landscape (privacy rules, Google, Apple, large exchanges) well enough to set policy that holds up.
• AI-first and data-fluent. You reach for LLMs and vibe-coding tools as part of your daily work. You're comfortable with SQL, BigQuery, and BI dashboards.
• People leadership. You've built or grown a team, you hire well, and you give people room to do their best work.