Engineering Manager - Ads Auto-Bidding - Reddit

At Reddit, advertising is our primary revenue driver—and we stand out by connecting advertisers with highly engaged, passionate communities. We’re building a large-scale business that fuels our broader mission, and we’re searching for leaders who thrive on tackling high-impact technological challenges to help us achieve that goal.

As the Engineering Manager for Auto-Bidding, you will lead a team responsible for designing and optimizing large-scale, real-time bidding systems that directly align with advertiser objectives. You’ll define the technical vision, shape the product roadmap, and ensure the team delivers significant, data-driven outcomes. By leveraging advanced machine learning models and real-time bidding techniques, your team will develop and enhance ad campaign optimizations that enable advertisers to maximize installs, conversions, or return on ad spend.

In addition, you’ll oversee vital initiatives—including a bid-based budget pacing system, key campaign optimization products like Maximize Conversions and Lowest Cost, and highly rigorous experiments that inform continual improvements. This role is central to Reddit’s success, ensuring advertisers’ budgetsare utilized efficiently while driving sustainable growth for the company.

Responsibilities:

Set Technical Vision & Strategy

• Define and execute the long-term roadmap for the Autobidding team, balancing innovation, efficiency, and revenue impact.
• Collaborate with leadership to align technology investments with broader business objectives.

Develop & Optimize Autobidding Solutions

• Oversee the design, implementation, and maintenance of high-performance autobidding algorithms and advertiser-facing products (e.g., Target CPA).
• Ensure these systems meet or exceed campaign performance goals and reliability standards.

Mentor & Grow Your Team

• Recruit, mentor, and retain top engineering talent.
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing culture, with a focus on technical mentorship and career development.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product Managers, Data Scientists, and other engineering teams to ensure our bidding solutions align with product requirements and key performance indicators.
• Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to non-engineering stakeholders.

Continuous Improvement

• Champion best practices for model quality, system reliability, and operational excellence.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering velocity, reduce costs, and optimize performance through rigorous experimentation.

Requirements: 

Experience & Management

• Engineering Leadership: At least 2 years of engineering management experience, ideally guiding machine learning or similarly technical teams.
• Industry Tenure: 8+ years of professional experience in building and operating large-scale Ads or Marketplace systems.
• People Management & Team Building: Proven ability to manage, mentor, and grow engineering teams. Demonstrated skills in performance management, hiring, team development, and fostering diverse, inclusive work environments.

Machine Learning & Marketplace Expertise

• Hands-On ML Proficiency: Practical experience with real-time serving, model development, and optimization.
• Control Systems & Algorithms: Familiarity with control systems (e.g., PID controllers), multi-armed bandits, reinforcement learning, or bidding/pricing optimization techniques.
• Marketplace Optimization: Ability to design new bidding optimization products/algorithms and conduct rigorous A/B experiments to assess both business and marketplace impact.
• Experimentation & Data Analysis: Knowledge of metric design, experimentation methodologies, and large-scale data analysis.

System Architecture & Scalability

• Scalable Systems & Data Pipelines: Expertise in architecting robust, high-performance serving systems, data processing pipelines, and real-time streaming solutions.
• Ads Domain Knowledge: Familiarity with ads delivery, recommendation systems, marketplace dynamics, or targeting/optimization is preferred.

Strategic Vision & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Technical Strategy & Execution: Adept at defining a clear technical vision aligned with the company’s goals, while overseeing day-to-day project execution.
• Collaboration & Communication: Comfortable working with cross-functional teams—including Product Management and Data Science—and able to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• Adaptability & Service Mindset: Embraces changing priorities and requirements with a solutions-focused approach, consistently seeking to support internal teams and external partners.