Software Engineer, Serving

About Liftoff

Liftoff is a leading AI-powered performance marketing platform for the mobile app economy. Our end-to-end technology stack helps app marketers acquire and retain high-value users, while enabling publishers to maximize revenue across programmatic and direct demand.

Liftoff’s solutions, including Accelerate, Direct, Monetize, Intelligence, and Vungle Exchange, support over 6,600 mobile businesses across 74 countries in sectors such as gaming, social, finance, ecommerce, and entertainment. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Redwood City, CA, Liftoff has a diverse, global presence.

Role Overview

At Liftoff, we’re solving one of the core problems faced by every mobile app: growth. To do so, we build Machine Learning and Big Data-driven technology that can accurately predict which apps a user will like, and connect them in a compelling way. Our systems operate at a scale unseen outside of the largest Internet companies -- processing over 12 million requests per second and interacting with over 5 billion unique users each day.

The Serving team builds and maintains the mission-critical infrastructure responsible for serving ads across Liftoff’s product line.

Responsibilities

• Take end-to-end ownership of changes to Liftoff’s high-performance serving infrastructure, including fleets for real-time request handling and GPU-powered inference, as well as large-scale, low-latency distributed data stores.
• Develop and improve tools that help machine learning engineers run experiments, benchmark model inference latency and throughput, and validate changes before deploying them to production.
• Ship code multiple times a day, and within seconds see its quantified impact on millions of users and our business's revenue.
• Be part of an “engineering excellence” culture through state-of-the-art tools, risk-driven testing, explainable systems, and code review.
• Become an expert in Go, Redis, and the many other cutting-edge open source technologies that maximize our development velocity.
• Join a nimble, consistently excellent, and experienced engineering team (former Google/LI/Ooyala/etc).

Desired Qualities and Experiences

• Very strong coding ability.
• Solid core CS fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, architecting systems).
• An incredible desire for quality and perfection, and the ability to temper it when necessary to ship.
• Sets ego aside in pursuit of finding the best solution, no matter where it comes from.
• Self-motivated and a great ability to hustle.
• Excited to work on large scale data stores and distributed systems.
• B.S. or higher in Computer Science (or equivalent work experience).
• 4+ years software engineering experience.
• Experience building large distributed systems or backend architectures.
• A healthy sense of fun!

Location

This role is eligible for full-time remote work in one of our entities: CA, CO, ID, IL, FL, GA, MA, MI, MN, MO, NJ, NV, NY, OR, PA, TX, UT, and WA.

We are a remote-first company with US hubs in Redwood City, Los Angeles, and New York City.

Travel Expectations

We offer several opportunities for in-person team gatherings, including but not limited to project meetings, regional meetups, and company-wide events. We expect our employees to attend these gatherings at least once per quarter. These gatherings provide essential opportunities for collaboration, communication, and team building.

Compensation

Liftoff offers all employees a full compensation package that includes equity and health/vision/dental benefits associated with your country of residence. Base compensation will vary based on the candidate's location and experience.

The following are our base salary ranges for this role:

• SF Bay Area, NYC, Los Angeles/Orange County: $165,000 - $205,000
• Seattle/Olympia, Austin, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Boston: $151,000 - $188,000
• All other cities and towns in our approved states: $141,000 - $176,000

Conclusion

Liftoff offers a fast-paced, collaborative, and innovative work environment where employees are empowered to grow and make an impact. We’re shaping the future of the mobile app ecosystem—join us and help accelerate what’s next.

Liftoff’s compensation strategy includes competitive salaries, equity, and benefits designed to support employee well-being and performance. We benchmark compensation based on role, level, and location to ensure fairness and market alignment. Benefits may include medical coverage, wellness stipends, and additional perks based on your country of residence.

Liftoff is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and applicants regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, age, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.