Senior Distributed Systems Engineer Jobs in California

At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode - pushing the boundaries of storytelling, global fandom and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition and cutting-edge technology.

Come be a part of what's next. We launched our ad-supported tier in November 2022 and are building a world-class, in-house ad tech ecosystem. Ad Eventing is the backbone of that ecosystem - the high-throughput, low-latency pipeline that captures, validates, deduplicates, and processes every ad impression, click, and completion event at Netflix scale.

The accuracy and reliability of this data directly powers billing, reporting, pacing, and optimization across the entire ads platform. Our Team The Ad Eventing team sits within the Ad Serving & Decisioning org at Netflix Ads. We own the systems that ingest and process billions of ad events per day - from client-side beacons fired during playback to server-side signals from our ad server.

Our work spans real-time event ingestion, deduplication and validation, stream processing pipelines, and the authoritative data contracts that downstream systems (billing, reporting, pacing, ML) depend on. We operate at the intersection of reliability engineering, data infrastructure, and ads domain expertise. We are looking for a senior technical leader to own the technical direction of this pod, set the architectural bar, and drive execution on the hardest problems in event processing at Netflix scale.

This is a 60% builder / 40% influencer role: you will write code, ship a proof-of-concept in your first weeks, and earn the trust of an opinionated senior team while simultaneously setting direction across the organization. What You'll Do Own the technical direction of the Ad Eventing team: architecture reviews, incident leadership, capacity planning, and scaling Architect and evolve the end-to-end ad event pipeline - from client beacon receipt through validation, deduplication, enrichment, and downstream fan-out - under strict latency and throughput constraints Scale our event ingestion infrastructure to handle billions of events per day with high availability, exactly-once semantics, and sub-second processing SLAs Design and implement robust deduplication and validation systems that ensure event accuracy across retries, network failures, and client-side inconsistencies Build and operate stream processing pipelines (e.g., Kafka, Flink, or equivalent) that power real-time signals for pacing, frequency capping, and reporting Define and maintain authoritative event schemas and data contracts that serve as the source of truth for billing, advertiser reporting, and ML feature pipelines Partner closely with Ad Serving, Pacing, Reporting, and Science teams to ensure event data meets the accuracy, latency, and completeness requirements of each consumer Drive operational excellence: reliability, observability, deployment automation, capacity planning, and incident leadership across the eventing stack Drive modularization and platform-thinking: build reusable components and clean interfaces that let the team and partner teams move faster Skills & Experience We're Seeking 10+ years building distributed systems and backend services at large scale; 3+ years in the ads domain Deep experience with high-throughput event ingestion and stream processing at scale - Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming, or equivalent Built and operated event deduplication, validation, and attribution systems in an ads or similarly high-stakes data environment Strong understanding of exactly-once and at-least-once delivery semantics, idempotency patterns, and the tradeoffs between them Experience designing event schemas and data contracts that serve multiple downstream consumers with different latency and consistency requirements Familiarity with ad measurement concepts: impression tracking, viewability, click attribution, completion rates, and IAB standards Track record of technical leadership across multiple teams, setting architectural direction and influencing cross-functional roadmaps Comfortable at the intersection of engineering, data, and product - translating advertiser reporting requirements and billing accuracy needs into production systems Demonstrated ability to operate in an environment that is a mix of big-tech scale and startup speed, delivering production-ready results on tight timelines Nice to Haves Experience with CTV-specific event challenges: server-side ad insertion (SSAI), VAST/VMAP beacon tracking, live event traffic spikes Familiarity with third-party measurement and verification integrations (MOAT, IAS, DoubleVerify, Nielsen) Built or improved billing-grade event pipelines where accuracy directly impacts revenue reconciliation Experience with experimentation infrastructure for event pipelines: validating schema changes, pipeline migrations, and deduplication logic without impacting downstream consumers Strong background in resiliency and reliability: ensuring pipeline availability under extreme load (live events, traffic spikes, device-side retry storms) Familiarity with privacy and compliance constraints on event data (GDPR, CCPA, data minimization) Experience building observability and alerting frameworks for event pipelines - detecting drops, duplicates, and latency regressions in real time. Generally, our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses

You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $499,000.00 - $900,000.00

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off.

Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more details about our Benefits here. Netflix is a unique culture and environment.

Learn more here. Inclusion is a Netflix value and we strive to host a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you want an accommodation/adjustment for a disability or any other reason during the hiring process, please send a request to your recruiting partner.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.