Senior Engineering Manager, Ads Backend

About Zattoo

Zattoo is a TV streaming company founded in 2005, when it launched Europe’s first TV streaming service. It is now recognised as the world’s first certified climate neutral TV streaming provider, serving several million users across three countries. The company has more than 230 employees representing 47 nationalities and describes itself as a mature, stable start-up with a human-centred culture built on reliability, transparency, inclusion, and responsibility toward people and the planet.

The role

Video sits at the centre of Zattoo’s product, spanning live channels available around the clock and on-demand content from many providers. The Ads Backend team is responsible for turning that content into a personalised advertising experience that generates revenue.

This position combines people leadership and deep technical ownership. You will help the team perform at its best by creating an approachable environment, listening well, and enabling strong collaboration and knowledge sharing. At the same time, you will contribute ideas to improve system architecture and expand what the platform can do.

The role is hands-on and leadership-focused. You are expected to stay close to engineering work, act as a technical lead, review designs, contribute directly to critical code when necessary, and guide decisions through example.

Ads Backend will be your base, but your influence will extend beyond the team. You will work closely with the Ingest & Storage, Streaming & CDN, and Playback teams, support broader technical direction for video at Zattoo, and participate in cross-team initiatives.

About the Ads Backend team

The team owns Zattoo’s in-house Server-Side Ad Insertion solution, covering the full ad pipeline from ad selection through impression tracking. The platform is built as a set of services that operate at scale and directly affect business revenue.

The team works closely with sister engineering teams as well as commercial and ad operations stakeholders. A major re-architecture of the SSAI platform is coming next, and this hire is expected to help lead that effort from the front.

What you will do

• Guide the Ads Backend team from both an organisational and technical perspective.
• Define and steward the architecture and technical vision of the SSAI platform together with senior developers.
• Stay hands-on as a technical lead by reviewing designs, raising engineering standards, and stepping into important code when required.
• Own the full development lifecycle and operational reliability of services that have direct revenue impact.
• Help steer the technical direction of Zattoo’s wider video platform together with other video teams and Principal Engineers.
• Drive initiatives that span multiple video teams.
• Act as the team’s voice with internal stakeholders.
• Manage 2 to 4 engineers directly and take responsibility for hiring.
• Support the growth, development, and retention of engineering talent.

What you need

• At least 5 years of experience leading engineering teams.
• Up-to-date hands-on engineering ability, including the capacity to design, build, and review production-grade code while serving as technical lead.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and/or Go.
• Background in building highly available APIs and services that can scale.
• Experience with distributed systems, event-driven design, message queues such as Kafka, and non-relational databases such as Scylla.
• A testing mindset, with testing treated as a core part of software development.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Experience in ad tech platforms, ad serving, and dynamic ad insertion, including DAI/SSAI.
• Broad knowledge of the video delivery pipeline, including ingest, transcoding, packaging, DRM, streaming, and playback.

What Zattoo offers

• A competitive market salary.
• 30 days of vacation plus public holidays.
• Flexible, trust-based working hours.
• Remote work from anywhere worldwide for up to 8 weeks per year.
• Free access to Zattoo’s streaming product.
• A personal development budget, German lessons, and company hack days.
• An inclusive, diverse team spanning 47 nationalities.
• Health checks, mental wellbeing support, team sports, and related wellness benefits.
• Carbon-neutral operations, an active Green team, discounted BVG tickets, and free bike rentals.
• Social activities such as fireside chats, lunches, an in-house bar, BBQs, monthly events, a summer party, and an annual off-site.

Equal opportunity and hiring process

Zattoo welcomes applicants from all backgrounds and treats every candidate equally, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic. The company follows fair, open, and equitable hiring practices and is happy to answer questions during the process. In line with the EU Pay Transparency Directive, the applicable compensation range is shared before the first interview.