R&D Lead (Hands-on) | AdTech

R&D Lead (Hands-on) | AdTech

Location: Tel Aviv

A stable and innovative global AdTech company is looking for an experienced Hands-on R&D Lead to lead its engineering team and drive the evolution of its core advertising platform.

The company develops advanced monetization solutions for app developers and publishers, leveraging cutting-edge technologies across the programmatic advertising ecosystem. This is a unique opportunity to join a small, highly skilled engineering team and have a direct impact on technology strategy, product direction, and business growth.

About the Role

We're looking for a hands-on engineering leader with deep AdTech expertise who combines technical leadership, architectural vision, and business understanding.

Reporting directly to senior leadership, you will lead the R&D team while remaining actively involved in software development, architecture, and technical decision-making.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a small team of software engineers while remaining hands-on.
• Own the architecture, scalability, and technical direction of the AdTech platform.
• Design and develop high-performance distributed systems and modern web applications.
• Build scalable backend services, APIs, SDK integrations, and real-time advertising infrastructure.
• Drive engineering best practices, CI/CD processes, code quality, and system reliability.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Data, and Business teams to deliver scalable platform capabilities.
• Lead architecture discussions, technology selection, and long-term platform evolution.
• Optimize performance, scalability, security, and availability across production systems.
• Evaluate and leverage AI technologies to improve engineering productivity and product capabilities.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software development experience.
• Previous experience leading engineering teams while remaining hands-on.
• Mandatory experience in the AdTech / Programmatic Advertising industry.
• Strong knowledge of:
• RTB
• SSPs & DSPs
• Header Bidding
• Bidders
• SDK Integrations
• Publisher Monetization
• Expert-level Java development experience.
• Strong hands-on experience with Node.js and React.
• Experience designing large-scale distributed and cloud-native architectures.
• Strong AWS experience.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and containerized environments.
• Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines and DevOps best practices.
• Experience with MySQL, MongoDB, REST APIs, Microservices, and distributed systems.
• Experience working with high-volume, real-time production environments.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and mentoring skills.
• Business-oriented mindset with the ability to align technology with product and company strategy.
• Fluent English.

What We Offer

• Join a stable and growing global AdTech company.
• Lead the technology behind a large-scale programmatic advertising platform.
• High level of ownership and influence over architecture and engineering strategy.
• Small, highly skilled engineering team.
• Opportunity to work with cutting-edge AdTech technologies and AI-driven innovation.
• Competitive compensation and excellent long-term career growth.